“I have it,” said Anne, and then turning she said: “Will you kindly stay here until day after to-morrow, to please me, Mrs. Carr? Then father and I will drive up in the morning and take Jill home. I know Mr. Hugh, who has bought the land, he’s a very particular friend of mine and Waddles’s, and I’ll tell him that I asked you.”
Mrs. Carr was only too glad of an honourable day’s reprieve. Then, as the sun almost at setting, shone through the window, Anne opened the door and said that they must get their wheels and go on, for she had been so excited by what had passed that she was now doubly anxious lest those at home should worry.
“Leddies, would ye—” began Mrs. Carr, hesitating, “would ye drink a cup of tea with me before ye go? It’ll not take a minute, and it’s likely the last time I’ll be offer’n it to company,” she added with grim humour.
Anne accepted the invitation promptly with her fine breeding, not giving the Willoughbys a chance to demur. A brush fire was burning in the stove, and Anne saw by the heap of faggots outside how the woods had been kept clear of underbrush.
The Herb Witch opened a narrow cupboard by the chimney and, as she did so, they caught sight of a dozen or so bits of old Lowestoft china, a tea-pot, cream pitcher, caddy, and half a dozen cups and saucers.
“How beautiful!” exclaimed Martica Willoughby, who “collected.” “Do you know that those are valuable? Why don’t you sell them?” she continued indiscreetly.
Miss Letty declared afterward that the Herb Witch suddenly grew so tall that she thought that her head would bump against the ceiling, as she answered: “Those same are my self-respect. When I’ve been tormented to beg and ask favours, I opened that door and looked at the bits that come from afar with me, and I minded those I came from, and whose will I crossed to my hurt. If ye sell your self-respect, leddy, that’s to be the real pauper,” and poor Martica forgot her college-bred sufficiency for once, and mumbled an apology.
Quickly the tea was drawn, only Anne noticing that it was the last in the caddy, and the sugar the last in the bowl, and Mrs. Carr taking a small loaf from a stone jar cut it in thin slices and spread them with wild plum jam, from the same closet where there still remained a few pots. “I’m out of butter, as it haps,” she said dryly.
The tea was delicious and every one enjoyed it heartily. Anne was standing by the door with a second “jamwich,” as she always called the combination, in her hand when wheels came up the lane, a horse stopped suddenly, and a figure sprang from the runabout, vaulted over the rickety gate that the rain had made still more difficult to open, and strode up the walk. It was Mr. Hugh, and he wore what Anne had always called his “would-like-to-break-something” expression.
It flashed through her brain that he was either vexed at finding the Herb Witch still in the house, or that he blamed her in some way for their detention. She never knew exactly why she did it, but the moment he reached the door and opened his lips to speak she thrust the bit of bread and jam between his lips, calling gaily: “You are just in time, it’s perfectly delicious, and the very last piece, too. Please, Mrs. Carr, do you think that you could coax one more cup of tea from that duck of a pot? It’s Mr. Hugh, you know, and he’s come to look for us.”