“I never said it wasn’t,” she faltered. “Why do ye look at me so nasty, Mrs. Biles?”
“Oh, ye don’t know, I s’pose?” retorted Mrs. Biles sourly. “How be your ’taters, Ann Kerley, this marnin’?”
“Doin’ finely, thanks be,” said poor Ann, brightening up, as she considered the conversation was taking a more agreeable turn.
“Not blighted, I s’pose?” put in a little fat woman who had hitherto been silent.
“Not a sign o’ blight about ’em,” said Mrs. Kerley joyfully. “There, I did just chance to look at ’em when I did first get up, an’ they’re beautiful.”
“That’s strange,” remarked Mrs. Biles, with a meaning sniff. “Every single ’tater at the ’lotments be blighted, they do tell I. Mrs. Pilcher did say when her husband went up there this marnin’ he could smell ’em near a quarter of a mile away.”
“Dear, to be sure!” groaned Ann, sympathetically, being quite willing to condone any little asperities of temper on the part of folks suffering from such a calamity. “’Tis a terr’ble pity, Mrs. Biles. There, ’tis along o’ the ’lotments layin’ out so open like, I d’ ’low. Now my bit o’ garden be sheltered.”
The little fat woman, usually a meek sort of body, snorted fiercely.
“’Tisn’t very likely as your garden ’ud suffer, Mrs. Kerley,” she cried, in a voice that trembled with wrath. “Your garden is safe enough—an’ so was the ’lotments till yesterday.”
“Well, I be pure sorry, I’m sure,” said Ann, looking from one to the other in bewilderment. “’Tis just as luck would have it, I s’pose.”