"I wouldn't have you on paying terms,"—she answered; "I don't take in lodgers."
"But—but—how do you live?"
He put the question hesitatingly, yet with keen curiosity.
"How do I live? You mean how do I work for a living? I am a lace mender, and a bit of a laundress too. I wash fine muslin gowns, and mend and clean valuable old lace. It's pretty work and pleasant enough in its way."
"Does it pay you well?"
"Oh, quite sufficiently for all my needs. I don't cost much to keep!" And she laughed—"I'm all by myself, and I was never money-hungry! Now come!—you mustn't talk any more. You know who I am and what I am,—and we'll have a good long chat to-morrow. It's bed-time!"
She led him, as though he were a child, into a little room,—one of the quaintest and prettiest he had ever seen,—with a sloping raftered ceiling, and one rather wide latticed window set in a deep embrasure and curtained with spotless white dimity. Here there was a plain old-fashioned oak bedstead, trimmed with the same white hangings, the bed itself being covered with a neat quilt of diamond-patterned silk patchwork. Everything was delicately clean, and fragrant with the odour of dried rose-leaves and lavender,—and it was with all the zealous care of an anxious housewife that Mary Deane assured her "guest" that the sheets were well-aired, and that there was not "a speck of damp" anywhere. A kind of instinct told him that this dainty little sleeping chamber, so fresh and pure, with not even a picture on its white-washed walls, and only a plain wooden cross hung up just opposite to the bed, must be Mary's own room, and he looked at her questioningly.
"Where do you sleep yourself?" he asked.
"Upstairs,"—she answered, at once—"Just above you. This is a two-storied cottage—quite large really! I have a parlour besides the kitchen,—oh, the parlour's very sweet!—it has a big window which my father built himself, and it looks out on a lovely view of the orchard and the stream,—then I have three more rooms, and a wash-house and cellar. It's almost too big a cottage for me, but father loved it, and he died here,—that's why I keep all his things about me and stay on in it. He planted all the roses in the orchard,—and I couldn't leave them!"
Helmsley said nothing in answer to this. She put an armchair for him near the bed.