“It’s all very well to laugh, Johnny. Christmas gambols mean fun to you young fellows with your supple limbs; but to us fifty-year-old people they may be something else. I wish I had tied some list round my boots.”
We left the ice in the Ravine, and she came up the zigzag path easily to the smooth road. I offered to take the umbrella.
“Thank you, Johnny; but I’d rather carry it myself. It’s my best silk one, and you might break it. I never dare trust my umbrellas to Tom: he drives them straight out against trees and posts, and snaps the sticks.”
She turned into Timberdale Court, and asked to see Mrs. Broom. Mrs. Broom appeared in the parlour with her sleeves turned up to the elbow, and her hands floury. She had been housekeeper during old Mr. Ashton’s time.
“Look here,” said Mrs. Coney, dropping her voice a little: “I’ve come to ask a word or two about that woman—from the shed, you know. Who is she?—and what is she?”
But the dropping of Mrs. Coney’s voice was as nothing to the dropping of the housekeeper’s face. The questions put her out uncommonly.
“I wish to my very heart, ma’am, that the woman—she’s but a poor young thing at best!—had chosen any part to fall ill in but this! It’s like a Fate.”
“Like a what?” cried Mrs. Coney.
“And so it is. A Fate for this house. ’Tis nothing less.”
“Why, what do you mean, Broom?”