“Will she like that?”
“Ah, Master Johnny! There are odd moments throughout all our lives when we have to do things we don’t like any more than we like poison—I hate to look at the place,” cried Mrs. Cramp, energetically. “When I think of Mrs. Jacob’s having to turn out of it, and all through Val’s folly, it gives me the creeps.”
This applied to North Villa, of which we then were abreast. Mrs. Cramp turned her face from it, and went on sideways, like a crab.
“Why, here’s Jane Preen!”
She was coming along quietly in the afternoon sunshine. I thought her altered. The once pretty blush-rose of her dimpled cheeks had faded; in her soft blue eyes, so like Oliver’s, lay a look of sadness. He had been dead about a year now. But the blush came back again, and the eyes lighted up with smiles as I took her hand. Mrs. Cramp went on; she was in a hurry to reach her home, which lay between Islip and Crabb. Jane rang the bell at North Villa.
“Shall I take a run over to Duck Brook to-morrow, Jane, and sit with you in the Inlets, and we’ll have a spell of gossip together?”
“I never sit in the Inlets now,” she said, in a half whisper, turning her face away.
“Forgive me, Jane,” I cried, repenting my thoughtlessness; and she disappeared up the garden path.
Susan opened the door. Her mistress was out, she said, but Miss Clementina was at home. It was Clementina that Jane wanted to see.