“I am looking at you to see if I can trace the old features of the old days,” he said, “and I do now; they grow upon my memory; though you were but a slip of a girl when I used to see you. I wonder I did not recognize you at first.”
“And I wonder that you can even recognize me now, sir,” she returned: “trouble and grief have so much altered me. I am getting old, too.”
“Have you lived in this house long?”
“Nearly ten years, sir. I live by letting my rooms.”
The Squire’s voice took a tone of compassion.
“It can’t be much of a living, once the rent and taxes are paid.”
Mrs. Mapping’s mild blue eyes, that seemed to the Squire to be of a lighter tinge than of yore, wore a passing sadness. Any one able to read it correctly might have seen she had her struggles.
“Are you a widow?”
“I—call myself one, sir,” she replied, with hesitation.
“Call yourself one!” retorted the Squire, for he liked people to be straightforward in their speech. “My good woman, you are a widow, or you are not one.”