Samuel Price was the relation who had entered into rest off a ladder, and Ruth looked duly serious.
"I have no doubt it upset you very much," she said.
"Well, miss," returned Mrs. Eccles, with dignity, "it's not as if I'd had my 'ealth before. I've had something wrong in the cistern" (Ruth wondered whether she meant system) "these many years. From a gell I suffered in my inside. But lor'! I was born to trouble, baptized in a bucket, and taken with collects at a week old. And how did you say Mrs. Cotton of the lodge might be, miss, as I hear is but poorly too?"
Ruth replied that she was better.
"She's no size to keep her in 'ealth," said Mrs. Eccles, "and so bent as she does grow, to be sure. Eh, dear, but it's a good thing to be tall. I always think little folks they're like them little watches, they've no room for their insides. And I wonder now"—Mrs. Eccles was coming to the point that had made her entrap Ruth on her way past—"I wonder now—"
Ruth did not help her. She knew too well the universal desire for knowledge of good and evil peculiar to her sex to doubt for a moment that Mrs. Eccles had begged her to "step in" only to obtain some piece of information, about which her curiosity had been aroused.
"I wonder, now, if Cotton at the lodge has heard anything of the poachers again this year, round Arleigh way?"
"Not that I know of," said Ruth, surprised at the simplicity of the question.
"Dear sakes! and to think of 'em at Vandon last night, and Mr. Dare and the keepers out all night after 'em."
Ruth was interested in spite of herself.