“As well as pretty nigh clamming will let me be, ma’am. Things has gone hard with me: many a day I’ve not had as much as a crust to eat. But this ’ll set me up again, and, ma’am, I’ll never cease to pray for you.”
“Don’t spend it in—in—you know, Mrs. Bond,” Maria ventured timidly to advise, in a lowered voice.
Mrs. Bond shook her head and turned up her eyes by way of expressing a very powerful negative. Probably she did not feel altogether comfortable on the subject, for she hastened to quit it.
“Have you heard the news about old Jekyl, ma’am?”
“No. What news?”
“He’s dead. He went off at one o’clock this a’ternoon. He fretted continual after his money, folks says, and it wore him to a skeleton. He couldn’t abear to be living upon his sons; and Jonathan don’t earn enough for himself now, and the old ’un felt it.”
Some one else was feeling it. Fretting continually after his money!—that money which might never have been placed in the Bank but for her! Miss Meta came flying in, went straight up to the visitor, and leaned her pretty arm upon the snuffy black gown.
“When shall I come and see the parrot?”
“The parrot! Lawks bless the child! I haven’t got the parrot now, I haven’t had him this many a day. I couldn’t let him clam,” she continued, turning to Maria. “I was clamming myself, ma’am, and I sold him, cage and all, just as he stood.”
“Where is he?” asked Meta, looking disappointed.