“Well, but what be it for?” persisted Mrs Caines.
“Oh, ’tis jist a fancy I tell ’ee—a fancy o’ my own to make the time pass of an evenin’. There, I do make poor Bartlett an’ your own father take turn about to keep I company, an’ this be Bartlett’s week.”
“What in the world d’ye mean?” gasped Phoebe, staring harder than ever, and flushing in her turn.
“Well, there, I’ve a-lived here all my life in this same little place as ye know—all the time I were a maid, an’ when I wed poor Bartlett—scarce a year wi’ he, an’ nigh upon farty wi’ Sweetapple, your father. By daylight I’m bustlin’ about, ye know, workin’ at one thing an’ workin’ at another, an’ I don’t seem to have no time for thinkin’, but at night, when bolt’s drawed an’ window shut, and I do sit here by myself, I do seem to see their shapes an’ hear their voices. It did use to bother I, thinkin’ of ’em both, ye know, an’ sometimes one ’ud seem to be there, an’ sometimes the other. An’ at last I hit upon the notion o’ makin’ ’em take week about.”
She paused, drawing imaginary patterns with her forefinger on the polished seat of the old settle.
“Mother, you’re raving!” exclaimed Phoebe aghast.
“No, my dear, no; I be in my senses right enough, an’ ’tis wonderful how pleasant the time do pass when I’m fancyin’ I’m havin’ sich company. When I do get the settle out, d’ye see, I do call to mind the time when Bartlett used to come here a-coortin’. Father’d be out on his rounds most like, and mother’d be busy wi’ one thing an’ another, an’ him an’ me’d sit here side by side on thik wold settle—there, I can call to mind as if ’twere yesterday—the very things he used to say, an’ the way he’d put his arm round me.”
She broke off, smiling to herself, her toothless mouth unconsciously assuming something of the archness with which doubtless she had responded of yore to Bartlett’s amorous speeches, her dim eyes looking past Phoebe’s astonished face, and past the smoke-stained wall beyond, to that far, far away past, when she was a maid, and her young lover sate beside her.
“He did use to talk a deal o’ nonsense talk,” she went on. “It do all come back to me now. I do seem to hear what he did say, an’ what I did answer back, and sometimes I do find myself laughin’ out loud, an’ puss’ll get up from the hearth an’ walk over to I quite astonished.”
“Well, to be sure!” ejaculated Mrs Caines, then stopped short, astonishment depriving her for the moment of the power of speech.