They went into the low-pitched living-room. The fusty smell turned Pamela faint. The old man seemed to divine her nausea.
“You should ha’ seen how missis kept it,” he said deprecatingly. “But, Lord bless you, I am a helpless old man, seventy-nine come October, and I can’t clean. I’m alone. Missis and the children dead. But I aint afraid.” He gave an apprehensive glance at the shadows of the murky room. “Why should I be? What I always says is this”—he kept peppering his platitudes with the silly laugh that went to the girl’s heart—“God, who made me, aint a-goin’ to kill me.”
Pamela looked round the room. Everything, inside and out of the farm, had gone to pieces for the lack of a capable woman.
“I did used to keep the garden terrible nice,” the old man said, seeing her gray eyes look through the door into the sunny wilderness. “But there! missis is gone! I’ll show you her earrings.”
He hobbled away into the adjoining room. Pamela heard him jingling metal and scrooping wooden furniture over the flag floor. Presently he came out with a card-board box shaking in his hand. He took the lid off reverently and held out the open box. A pair of earrings, of very pale gold, such as you can buy at fairs for a trifle, were on a bed of tissue paper.
“Very pretty,” the girl said lamely.
Jethro had gone outside. He was viewing the neglected fruit-trees severely.
“And there’s one more thing I must show you.”
Mansell hobbled away, up the crazy stairs this time, and came back with a snow-white smock, which he thrust into her hands.
“Missis made this for me to be married in.” He stuck his foolish red face forward and grinned more widely. “She put her best work into it. Lord bless you, when I was but a boy—I’m seventy-nine come October—we used to go to church on Sundays, every man in his clean smock. Missis did it. She was a rare one at her needle.”