"Can yer call that to mind, Mrs. Grey?" asked Matthew, eyeing her keenly and searchingly.
"Call it to mind! What's that to you? I never said I could, but I know it for a truth."
"Folks say there's few things yer don't know," replied Matthew, somewhat scared at her fierce tone.
"Folks are fools!"
"Some of 'em; not all. Most say yer knows everything, and can give philters and charms for sickness and heart-ache and the like."
"Folks are fools!" repeated she again.
"Well I know nothing, nor don't want to; but," said he, dropping his voice to a whisper, "if yer could only give me a charm to keep her tongue quiet," and he pointed with his thumb meaningly over his shoulder in the direction of the cottage, "I'd bless yer from the bottom of my heart as long as I live."
"What blessing will you give me?"
Matthew considered a moment, as the question somewhat puzzled him. Here was a woman who had apparently neither kith nor kin belonging to her, one who stood, as far as he could see, alone in the world. How was he to give her a blessing? She had neither children, nor husband to be kind or unkind to her; she might be a prosperous woman for aught he or the neighbours knew, or she might be the very reverse. She never seemed to crave for sympathy from anyone, but rather to shun it, and never allowed a question of herself on former days to be asked, without growing angry, and if it was repeated, or persisted in, violent.
Presently Matthew hit upon what he thought a safe expedient. "What blessing do yer most want?" he asked cunningly.