The old woman nodded.
"It is true these are news days in England and elsewhere. Times were, when the days might be dull without a birth or a death, or a mating. But now one wakes up to something stirrin' every day—a lad goin' off to the war, or maybe one gettin' killed; and the girls coomin' in to tell me their troubles; some of them just married, and some of them not married at all yet. But all of them worryin' their hearts out. Sure, and if war is goin' on forever—and it looks like it is—I'm for the women goin' into battle along with their men."
While she was talking Frieda had followed her hostess back into her kitchen—the room in which she really lived and had her being. It was also of stone, but the floor had a number of bright rag rugs as covering and the walls were lined with pictures cut from papers and magazines, and with picture postcards. One could have gotten a pretty fair knowledge of English history at the moment by studying Mrs. Huggins' picture gallery. She had on her walls a photograph of nearly every British officer then in command of the army or navy. She had replicas of innumerable battleships and also of statesmen. But in the place of honor over a shelf that held her Bible and a tiny daguerreotype of the late, lamented Mr. Huggins, hung a picture of England's big little man—Lloyd George. The aged woman received the old age pension which Lloyd George had given to the poor of England a few years before the outbreak of the present war.
Frieda sat down on a little chair which lovers of antiques would have given much to possess. There was a small fire burning in the tiny stove, and its red coals looked more cheerful than the great log fire at Kent House.
Frieda knew that Dame Quick would wish to prepare the tea herself.
She had rather a happy feeling as she watched Mrs. Huggins, as if she had been a little girl who had gone out one day and grown suddenly tired and forlorn, and then been unexpectedly invited into the very gingerbread house itself. But a gingerbread house presided over by a good spirit, not an evil one.
Her own little Dame Quick looked like a child's idea of an ancient good fairy. She may not have been so small to begin with, but at ninety she was bent over until she seemed very tiny indeed. Her face was brown and wrinkled and her eyes shone forth as black as elderberries in the late gathering time.
She placed a small wooden table in front of Frieda and not far from the fire and her own chair. Then she got out some heavy plates and two cups and saucers. And whatever the difference in elegance, tea is never so good served in a thin cup as in a thick one. Afterwards she opened the package containing Frieda's biscuits and jam and finally poured boiling water into her own brown stone tea kettle.
Then she and Frieda, sitting on opposite sides of the tea table, talked and talked.
Several times, as she sat there, Frieda thought that if she had been an English girl she would like to have had just such an old nurse or foster mother as Mrs. Huggins. For she might then have been able to confide a number of things to her—matters she could not talk about even to her sister, since she was not clear enough how she felt concerning them herself, and so Jack might get wrong impressions.