“Bridget, Bridget!” and this time the voice was decidedly authoritative in its tone, but what more Rose might have added was cut short by the widow, who dropped the griddle with a bang, and turning sharply round, replied:
“There’s no Bridget here, and if it’s me you mean, I am Mrs. Joseph Simms!”
Rose had good reason for remembering Mrs. Simms, and coloring crimson, she tried to apologize:
“I beg your pardon; I did not see your face. I supposed everybody kept a girl; and your back looked like——”
“Don’t make the matter any worse,” interrupted the widow, smiling in spite of herself at Rose’s attempt to excuse her blunder. “You thought from my dress that I was a hired girl, and so I was in my younger days, and I don’t feel none the wus for it neither. Miss Graham’s faint, is she? She’s had time to get over it, I think. Here’s the water,” and filling a gourd shell she handed it to Rose, who, in her admiration of the (to her) novel drinking cup, came near forgetting Annie.
But Annie did not care, for the rencounter between the widow and Rose had done her quite as much good as the water could, and Rose found her laughing the first really hearty laugh she had enjoyed since George went away.
“It’s just like me,” Rose said, as she resumed her seat by Annie, listening intently while she told how kind the Widow Simms had been, coming every day to stay with her, and only leaving her at night because Annie insisted that she should.
“I like Mrs. Simms!” was Rose’s vehement exclamation, “and I am glad Tom said what he did about Isaac, who used to saw our wood. I did not tell you, did I? And there’s something real nice about your husband, too. I mean to call her in while I read it,” and Rose ran out to the wood-shed, where the widow was now splitting a pine board for kindling, the newspaper she at first had used, having burned entirely out.
Rose’s manner and voice were very conciliatory as she said:
“Please, Mrs. Simms, come in and listen while I read what brother Tom has written about Mr. Graham and your Isaac,—something perfectly splendid. Tom has volunteered and gone to Washington, you know.”