Garde, when she had questioned her cousin Prudence, until there was little or nothing concerning Adam’s visit and farewell at the gate which she did not know, was still far from being certain of anything in connection with the whole predicament.
One thing, however, gave her a small measure of comfort. This was that her brooch was much more beautiful than the Spanish doubloon Adam had given to Prudence. Yet this comfort grew cold as she reflected that even if Adam did possibly like her as much as he did Prudence, he had written her those incomprehensible lines about burying sorrow, and he had gone away, she knew not where, or in what manner, without even giving her an opportunity of bidding him God-speed.
Mistress Merrill was not impulsive and nimble-witted without having resources at command, when occasion demanded. She was up ahead of the ordinary lark, on Monday morning, making straight for the home of old Goody Dune, for whom she frequently gathered simples.
Goody Dune had not contented herself in life with simples only. She had gathered complexities of wisdom and the things abstruse in life, for many a year. She was a wrinkled old woman whom children, kittens, dogs, horses and all things guided by instinct always sought in friendship at once. Anyone with patience enough to reconstruct her face on the lines it must once have worn, in her youth, would have found personal beauty still indicated in the old woman’s countenance. Her eyes still ensnared pretty lights of humor; her lips were still of that soft texture which in youth is so charming and in old age too flexible over vacancies where teeth are gone. Her hair was plentiful and so entirely gray that one might have looked at it closely and then have said: “Yes, the black ones seem to be coming; they will soon be getting quite thick.”
Never yet had Garde been able to get to Goody’s house sufficiently early to knock on the door. Goody always opened it to receive her. And always the old woman’s great black cat stood up, on top of the tall clock, on which she had been lying but the moment before, now arching her back and stretching, to add her welcome to that of her mistress.
The room never had ceased to have its fascinations for Garde, since the first time she had seen it, in her childhood. The small bags, which hung from the rafters, along with pendants made of herbs, roots and bulbs, might have contained gold and precious gems, for all that Garde knew to the contrary, while the dark cupboard and the great chest increased the possibilities of the place, which would have been so grand to rummage in, had it not been for the brass warming-pan, so terribly like a watchful moon, forever looking down from the wall. Then lastly, and mostly, in some particulars, there was Rex, the jackdaw, a veritable concentration of all the dark arts and wisdoms extant.
“Good morning, my dear,” said Goody, as Garde entered, breathless with her haste, “you have come to see me early.”
“She’s in love,” said the jackdaw, gravely.
“Oh, dear me!” gasped the girl.
“Rex, you wicked one,” expostulated Goody, mildly. “Never mind, my dear, he found you out that morning last week.”