“Do I or you know Mr. Aston best?” he demanded imperiously. “Claim indeed. Martha, you dear old stupid, where would I be now, if you hadn’t taken my mother in?”
“That were just a chance, Mr. Christopher, because I ’appened to be comin’ ’ome late and your pore ma was took bad on the bridge as I crossed, and bein’ a woman what ’ad a family, I saw what was the matter.”
“What was it more than a chance that Cæsar in looking for a boy to adopt stumbled on the son of someone he used to know?”
Again the oscillation made Mrs. Sartin nod vigorously. She bestowed on her companion another of those shrewd, dubious glances, began a sentence and stopped. 179
“Yes. What were you saying?” asked Christopher absently.
“You’ve come quite far enough, Mr. Christopher,” she announced, with the air of a woman come to a decision, “you just tell that man on the top to stop and let me out. Thanking you all the same, but I don’t care to be seen driving ’ome this time of night and settin’ folks a-talking. You set me down, there’s a dear Mr. Christopher.”
She got her way in the matter of dismissing the cab, but not in dismissing Christopher, her primary desire, lest an indiscreet tongue should prompt her to say more than was “rightful,” as she explained to Jessie.
“For if the dear innocent don’t see ’ow the land lays, it isn’t for me to show ’im, and Mr. Aymer so good to Sam.”
“Maybe you are all wrong,” said Jessie shortly.
Mrs. Sartin sniffed contemptuously.