"Objection! He'll take it back, ma'am, whether he has any objection or not," cried the positive Sarah. "Now then! who's this?"
Somebody seemed to be clattering up in clogs. A woman with the fish: three pairs of large soles and a score or two of herrings, which the captain had bought and paid for. Mrs. Copp, fearing what else might be coming, looked inclined to cry. The exasperated Sarah, more practical, took her hands out of the paste, wiped the flour off them on her check apron, and went darting across the heath without bonnet to the butcher's shop, the boy and his tray of rejected meat slowly following her. There she commenced a wordy war with the butcher, accusing him of being an idiot, with other disparaging epithets, and went marching home in triumph carrying two pounds of veal cutlet.
"And that's too much for us," she cried to her mistress, "with all that stock of fish and the pudding. What on earth is to be done with the fish, I don't know. If I fry a pair for dinner, and pickle the herrings, there'll be two pair left. They won't pickle. One had need to have poor folk coming here as they do at the Red Court. Master's gone off with purple streamers flying from his hat; I think he'd more need to put on bells."
Scarcely had she got her hands into the flour again, when another person arrived. A girl with a goose. It was in its feathers, just killed.
"If you please, ma'am," said she to Sarah, with a curtsey, "mother says she'll stick the other as soon as ever she can catch him; but he's runned away over the common. Mother sent me up with this for 'fraid you should be waiting to pluck him. The captain said they was to come up sharp."
Sarah could almost have found in her heart to "stick" her master. She was a faithful servant, and the waste of money vexed her. Mrs. Copp, quite unable to battle with the petty ills of life, left the strong-minded woman to fight against these, and ran away to her parlour.
The respected cause of all this, meanwhile, had reached Jutpoint, he and his streamers. There he had to wait a considerable time, but the train came in at last, and brought the travellers.
They occupied a first-class compartment in the middle of the train. There had been a little matter about the tickets at starting. Isaac Thornycroft procured them, and when they were seated, Anna took out her purse to repay him, and found she had not enough money in it. A little more that she possessed was in her box. Accustomed to travel second-class, even third, the cost of the ticket was more than she had thought for. Eighteenpence short!
"If you will please to take this, I will repay you the rest as soon as I can get to my box," she said, with painful embarrassment--an embarrassment that Isaac could not fail to notice and to wonder at. Reared as she had been, money wore to her an undue value; to want it in a time of need seemed little short of a crime. She turned the silver about in her hands, blushing painfully. Miss Thornycroft discerned somewhat of the case.
"Never mind, Anna. I dare say you thought to travel second-class. You can repay my brother later."