“Is that you, Jill?” she called out. “Nat told me you were here. Why ain’t your mother with you? Ain’t she well?”
“No, she has a fit of that old pain over her,” responded Jill. “I left her lying down. The pain takes a deal out of her, and I thought she had best be quiet.”
“Don’t she see no doctor? We has a splendid one belonging to the Guild; ef you and your mother would only join, you’d get a heap o’ good out of it, Jill. But you’re that obstinate, and when the best thing in the world is offered to you, you won’t so much as open your eyes to see it. I wonder Nat holds on to you, that I do.”
Jill smiled, reddened, and was about to reply, when the Irishwoman called out in her brilliant tones:
“What I say of Nat Carter is this, that he’s the luckiest gossoon in all London to have got the purtiest bit of a colleen to say she’ll wed him. Why, you ain’t got looks lit to hold a candle to her, Susy Carter, even though you are Nat’s sister.”
“Well, well,” said Susan, in a slightly patronising manner, “we must each of us go our own gait. If Jill and her mother won’t join the Guild, I can’t force ’em. Maybe you’ll do it later on, if Nat wishes it, Jill. And, oh, what do you think, here’s a bit o’ luck; I has just got that stand I was waiting for so long near the Marble Arch. The girl wot had it died yesterday, and I’ve stepped into her shoes, and a right good think I’ll make of it. I must be off now, or I’ll lose customers. Good-bye, Jill. Oh, by-the-way, you might as well mass these colours for me. I can’t make my basket look like yourn, however hard I try.”
Susy Carter put her basket on the ground as she spoke. Jill bent over it, re-arranged the flowers without a word, and returned it to her.
“Thank you—thank you,” she cried delightedly. “Why, Jill, what fingers you has! Who but yourself would have thought of putting these pink peonies close to all them crimson poppies, and then throwing up the colour with this bunch of green. Oh, it’s daring, but it’s lovely; it’ll fetch like anything. Now I’m off You get your mother to see a doctor, Jill.”
“No, I won’t,” said Jill, shortly, “I don’t believe in ’em, neither does mother.”
“Right you are, honey,” exclaimed Molly Maloney, “I don’t hold by docthors, nayther. If my little Kathleen dies of the faver—bless her, the darlint!—why, I know as it’s the will of the Almighty. But ef the docthor came and gave her his pizens—what is it, miss—what now?”