“Come in out o’ dust,” said the old woman, smartly, and then she bustled about and set him down in her little den to milk, bread, and some cold bacon.
That he had no appetite was the despair of his people and physician at home, and cod-liver oil, steel, quinine, and all manner of nastiness had been administered to provoke hunger in him, with no effect: by this time, however, he had almost as much hunger as the boy who had munched the turnip.
Nothing had ever tasted to him half so good in his life.
The old woman eyed him curiously. “You’s a runaway,” she thought; “but I’ll not raise the cry after ye, or they’ll come spying about this bit o’ gold.”
She said to herself that the child would come to no harm, and when a while had gone by she would step over to Ryde or Newport and get a guinea on the brooch.
Her little general shop was not a very prosperous business, though useful to the field-folk; and sanding her sugar, and putting clay in her mustard, and adding melted fat to her butter, had not strengthened her moral principles.
As Bertie was eating, there came a very thin, scantily-clad, miserable-looking woman, who held out a halfpenny. “A sup o’ milk for Susy, missus,” she said, in a very pitiful faint voice.
“How be Sue?” asked the mistress of the shop. The woman shook her head with tears running down her hollow cheeks.
“My boy he’s gone in spinney,” she murmured, “to try and catch summat, if he can: will you change it, missus, if he git a good bird?”
The old woman winked, frowned, and glanced at Bertie.