"You're not married, surely."
I answered in the negative with fewest possible words.
"Got a young man, though, I'll warrant; such a likely girl."
"I do not understand what you mean," I answered with considerable dignity, glad to let her know that her own English was not perfect.
"You must have been riz in a queer place not to know what likely is. Why, it's good-looking; and anybody knows you're that. But I suppose you didn't have much eddication, they mostly don't in England; my man didn't know even his letters; but I have pretty good book larnin' and so we got on all right," she continued, with a retrospective look on her not unkindly face.
"Who might your folks be in Cavendish?" she asked, after a few moments of welcome silence.
"I have no relatives there," I answered, I am afraid, rather ungraciously.
"Going as governess or nurse girl to some of the aristocracy there? You don't look as if you ever did much housework, though."
"I am going to Mr. Winthrop's."
"Deu tell! Why, I lived with his mother myself, when I was a widder first."