This was the truth for Goody had said these very same words, several times, in the presence of Rex, no more than five minutes after Garde had gone, that day when she and Adam had met in the forest.
“But I—oh, Goody, Rex is really wicked,” said Garde. “But I do so need you to tell me something.”
“Who doesn’t,” answered Goody. “What a pity it would be if I could never save anyone in the world from some little pain, or some mistake, and yet”—she shook her head, smiling half sadly—“how few human beings are willing even to listen. They must all burn their fingers and learn for themselves.”
“Fools!” said the jackdaw, “fools, fools, fools. I’m a fool myself.”
Fortunately Garde was not unaccustomed to these interruptions on the part of the knowing bird, so that, although he always made her pause and look at him, as if she expected to see how he did it, when he spoke, she was now enabled to tell Goody her troubles with quite as much rapidity as coherence.
She held back nothing. She told all about her original glimpse of Adam in the Plymouth procession, of their meeting, her immediate regard for him, then and there, the long fostering of her affection, and the events of the days just past. This done, she produced her slip of paper, on which Adam had written his mediocre verse, and laid it before the wise woman to be deciphered.
Goody read the lines several times. “How old are you now, my dear?” she asked, and then she added, “It hasn’t anything to do with your worries; it is only for my own foolish gratification that I ask.”
“I am eighteen,” said Garde.
“Well, I should have been puzzled myself, at eighteen,” said the old woman. She looked into vacancy, for a moment, dwelling on some fond memory that brought her sad smile to her withered lips again. “But you need not be worried. He loves you, dear, as indeed he should, but for some reason or other he believes you care for somebody else, and he is therefore taking himself away. Believing as he does, he is certainly right, as well as brave, in going away.”
“But I don’t love—like any one else,” protested Garde. “And I don’t see how or why he ever got such an idea into his head. He doesn’t know anybody that I know. He went to meeting with Mrs. Phipps—Oh! oh—Mr. Wainsworth!—He does know Mr. Wainsworth.”