“It’s nigh my time to go,” said Nancy. “I said to the carrier as he was to wait for me down the road. I wouldn’t be seen a-getting into the wagon here. Folks talks awful when they’re so few; and thank you kindly, Mrs. Preston, for the best cup of tea as I’ve tasted for ten years. Them as can get cream like that, has what I calls some comfort in this life.”
“Pamela,” said Mrs. Preston, “you can walk along with Nancy as far as Merryfield Farm, and give my compliments; and if they’d put a drop of their best cream in a bottle—It’s all I can do just now, Nancy Christian; but I am not one that forgets my friends, and the time may come—”
“The time will come, ma’am,” said Nancy, getting up and making her patroness a courtesy, “and I’m none afraid as you’ll forget; and thank you kindly for thinking o’ the cream—if it ain’t too much trouble to Miss Pamela. If you go up there, as you think to do, and find all as I say, you’ll be so kind as to let me know?”
“I’ll let you know, you may be sure,” said Mrs. Preston, in her short decisive tones of patronage. And then the girl, much against her will, had to put on her hat and go with Nancy. She did it, but it was with an ill grace; for she was longing to throw herself upon her mother and have an explanation of all this—what had happened, and what it meant. The air had grown cool, and old Betty had come out to her door, and Mrs. Swayne was in the little garden watering the mignonnette. And it was not easy to pass those two pairs of eyes and preserve a discreet incognito. To do her justice, Nancy tried her best; but it was a difficult matter to blind Mrs. Swayne.
“I thought as it was you,” said that keen observer. “I said as much to Swayne when he told me there was a lady to tea in the parlor. I said, ‘You take my word it’s her as come from Masterton asking after them.’ And I hope, mum, as I see you well. Mrs. Preston has been but poorly; and you as knows her constitootion and her friends—”
“She knows nothing about us,” said Pamela, with indignation; “not now; I never saw her in my life before. And how can she know about mamma’s constitution, or her friends either? Nancy, come along; you will be too late for Hobson if you stand talking here.”
“It’s never no loss of time to say a civil word, Miss Pamela,” said Nancy. “It’s years and years since I saw her, and she’s come through a deal since then. And having a family changes folks’ constitootions. If it wasn’t asking too much, I’d ask for a bit o’ mignonnette. Town folks is terrible greedy when they comes to the country—and it’s that sweet as does one’s heart good. Nice cream and butter and new-laid eggs, and a bit o’ lad’s love, or something as smells sweet—give me that, and I don’t ask for none o’ your grandeurs. That’s the good o’ the country to me.”
“They sends all that country stuff to old Mrs. Fennell, don’t they?” said Betty, who in the leisure of the evening had crossed the road. “I should have thought you’d been sick of all them things—and the fruit and the partridges as I see packed no later then this very afternoon. I should have said you had enough for six, if any one had asked me.”
“When the partridges is stale and the fruit rotten,” said Nancy, shrugging her shoulders; “and them as has such plenty, where’s the merit of it? I suppose there’s fine doings at the house, with all their shootings and all the strangers as is about—”
“They was at a picnic to-day,” said Betty. “Mr. John, he’s the one! He makes all them ladies leave their comfortable lunch, as is better than many a dinner, and down to the heath with their cold pies and their jellies and such like. Give me a bit of something ’ot. But they think he’s a catch, being the only son; and there ain’t one but does what he says.”