“Oh, Betty, are you ill?” asked Miss Drummond. “I came to tell you you have forgotten the basket.”
“No, my dear, no—not forgot. By no means that, lovey; but I has been took with the rheumatism this past week, and can’t move hand nor foot. I was wondering how you’d do without your cakes and tartlets, dear, and to think of them cherries lying there good for nothing on the ground is enough to break one’s ’eart.”
“So it is,” said Susan, giving an appreciative glance toward the open door. “They are beautiful cherries, and full of juice, I am sure. I’ll take a few, Betty, as I am going out, and pay you for them another day. But what I have come about now is the basket. You must get the basket away, however ill you are. If the basket is discovered we are all lost, and then good-bye to your gains.”
“Well, Missy, dear, if I could crawl on my hands and knees I’d go and fetch it, rather than you should be worried; but I can’t set fool to the ground at all. The doctor says as ’tis somethink like rheumatic fever as I has.”
“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” said Susan, not wasting any of her precious moments in pitying the poor suffering old woman. “What is to be done? I tell you, Betty, if that basket is found we are all lost.”
“But the laurel is very thick, lovey; it ain’t likely to be found—it ain’t, indeed.”
“I tell you it is likely to be found, you tiresome old woman, and you really must go for it or send for it. You really must.”
Old Betty began to ponder.
“There’s Moses,” she said, after a pause of anxious thought; “he’s a ’cute little chap, and he might go. He lives in the fourth cottage along the lane. Moses is his name—Moses Moore. I’d give him a pint of cherries for the job. If you wouldn’t mind sending Moses to me, Miss Susan, why, I’ll do my best; only it seems a pity to let anybody into your secrets, young ladies, but old Betty herself.”
“It is a pity,” said Susan; “but, under the circumstances, it can’t be helped. What cottage did you say this Moses lived in?”