“Craft shall meet craft,” she was saying. “Yes, if Clary had confided in me I wouldn’t ha’ done nothing secret or unbeknown, but as it is, I’ll just find out for myself what I can. The child’s as good a little lad as ever walked the earth. He’s all the same to me as if he were bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him. But a dearie me! I ain’t a-going to be gulled not for nobody, and by Clary least of all. Haven’t I nursed her and dangled her in my arms and lay awake with her when she was teething, and is she going to make a fool of her old mother now? Not a bit of it.
“There’s a mighty secret wrapped up in that little lad, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it. He never told me—poor darling!—but Clary didn’t count that he’d talk in his sleep. She gives me three pound a week for looking after him; s’pose I make her give me ten or fifteen, or s’pose I tell her that her secret and I ain’t going to be bedfellows much longer. S’pose I refuse to keep it altogether? Ah, I have Clary in my power. Fancy me having a woman like that under my thumb! But it is so—it is so. When she was young she was always one too many for me. Even as a little tot she would have her own way, and she’d look round at me as spiteful as you please, and just do the very thing I told her not, but the tables is going to be turned now, or I’m much mistook. I wish no ill to my own darter, but I’ll know her secret or my name’s not Sary Ives.”
The little woman walked on as rapidly as she could. She was a smart little personage and very trim and spruce for her years. It was a windy day, and her thin skirts were blown about her spare figure. She wore an old-fashioned poke bonnet, and a black shawl was pinned neatly across her chest. She looked the very essence of rustic respectability. Her dress was of black merino, and she had a gay crimson kerchief peeping out under the shawl; her gloves were of crimson cloth of the same color as the kerchief. She wore cloth boots with elastic sides, and looked down at them now and then with complacency.
“Aye, I’m as neat as a new pin,” she said to herself; “and these boots are as comfortable as can be. Yes, I’ll find out all I can, and I’ll let out nothing. Now, I wonder who this pretty young miss is a-coming up the avenue. I’ll bob a curtsey to her leastways.”
A tall girl leading a bicycle and wearing a dark blue serge cycling dress was seen approaching. A couple of dogs were following her. The dogs made at once for the old woman, barking loudly as they did so. But Mrs. Ives was no coward. She dropped two or three curtseys, as was her manner, first to the lady and then to the dogs. The dogs began to leap up at her.
“Manners, manners!” she cried to them. “Get down. Call ’em off, please, missy, call ’em off. I ain’t afeared, for I don’t think they’ll bite, but I don’t want to be stretched flat on the road. Call ’em off, please, missy.”
Barbara whistled to the dogs, who immediately bounded back to her. She drew up before the little woman, who dropped another curtsey.
“Eh, but you’re a pretty gel, and it’s a pleasure to look at you,” said Mrs. Ives.
Barbara colored.
“I don’t know your face,” she said. “I know most of the people round here. Are you a stranger?”