“Would not it be well to send one of the men with a note to Mr. Hanlon, asking him to call?”
“It’s no use,” answered Susan shaking her head. “Mr. Hanlon he came up the day of the inquest; he had to come, and after the crowner was gone he wanted to see mistress. In course, I asked him to step in here and told her, and you’d have thought she’d have taken my head off. I was glad enough to get out of the room. I would not like to be the one who should tell her Mr. Hanlon was here again.”
“Why, I thought she always liked him,” said Grace fairly puzzled.
“I can’t say for that, it was hard to tell who Mrs. Brady liked or did not like—she is a mighty secret woman in her ways, but the master hated him and forbid him the house. Most like she minds all that.”
“Poor Nettie, how fond she must have been of him after all!” murmured Grace, speaking her thoughts out loud.
“Fond of the master, is it you mean!” asked Susan. “Fond of him; that she wasn’t, that she could not be, I’ll take my Bible oath. Why, Miss—” and in her energy she banged the herrings and superstructure on the table again—“he treated her worse nor a slave. If it had not been for the children, she’d have gone over and over and over again. I have seen it in her face when she has been sitting beside the fire, thinking, thinking; or when maybe she has left the room after giving him one look. He’s gone and there’s no need for us to send the bad word after him; but no black negro ever had a worse time of it than the woman that’s now a widow; and whatever she is fretting about—and if I was you Miss, I would not trouble my head concerning that matter—it is not her murdered husband.”
“I am afraid you are not fond of Mrs. Brady,” suggested Grace. Perhaps the exact speech the unities might have suggested at such a crisis would not have been composed of the same or even similar words, but certainly an astute lawyer or a clever worldly woman would have put just the same question.
“An’ saving your presence, Miss, who could be fond of her?” inquired Susan. “She’s secret as the grave. He might beat or starve or blackguard her as he liked, and she answered never a word. Never to one did she come for pity or help. I have heard them say Miss, old women, not like me, that over and over again they wanted to talk with her about her trouble, and she put them back. She was that proud Miss, flesh and blood could not thole her.”
“Proud,” Grace repeated, and she looked at the room, she glanced at the table.
“Ay, just proud,” was the answer; “folks are often as proud of the things they want to have as of those they have got, and if they can’t get all they want they turn sulky, just—just as she did,” finished Susan, and without leaving Grace time for a reply, she took up the herring-dish and its belongings and disappeared.