Alice ran off to find Andy, and Mrs. Malling picked up another envelope.
“Prudence, my girl,” went on the farm-wife, as soon as Alice’s back was turned, “just open that other,” pointing to a blue envelope. “The postmark reads Ainsley. I take it, it’s from young Robb Chillingwood. Maybe it’s to say as he’ll be along d’rectly.”
Prudence picked the last letter up.
“It is hot in here, mother; I wonder you can stand it.”
Her mother looked up over her spectacles.
“Stand it, child? It’s a woman’s place, is the kitchen. I can’t trust no one at the stove but myself. I’ve done it for over forty summers, an’ I don’t reckon to give it up now. This is from that p’lice feller. He ain’t doing much, I’m thinking. Seems to me he spends most of his time in making up his bills of expenses. Howsum, you look into it. What’s Master Robb say?”
She put her glasses back into their broad old-fashioned case and turned back to the stove. She 242 could never allow anything to keep her long from her cooking. She lifted a lid and stabbed her cooking fork gently into a great boiler full of potatoes. Then she passed round to the other side and shook up the fire.
“Oh, what a shame, mother! Won’t Al be disappointed? Robb can’t come out here, at least not to stay.” Prudence had finished her letter and now looked disappointedly over at her mother.
“And how be that?” asked the old lady, standing with a shovel of anthracite coal poised in her hand.
“He says that the rush of emigrants to the district keeps him at work from daylight to dark. It’s too bad. Poor old Al!”