Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. “An’ after that, we two made it up ’twixt us so’s ’e could come to Lunnon for a job in a liv’ry-stable not far from me. ’E got it. I ’tended to that. There wadn’t no talk nowhere. His own mother never suspicioned how ’twas. He just slipped up to Lunnon, an’ there we abode that winter, not ’alf a mile t’other from each.”
“Ye paid ’is fare an’ all, though”; Mrs. Fettley spoke convincedly.
Again Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. “Dere wadn’t much I didn’t do for him. ’E was me master, an’—O God, help us!—we’d laugh over it walkin’ together after dark in them paved streets, an’ me corns fair wrenchin’ in me boots! I’d never been like that before. Ner he! Ner he!”
Mrs. Fettley clucked sympathetically.
“An’ when did ye come to the eend?” she asked.
“When ’e paid it all back again, every penny. Then I knowed, but I wouldn’t suffer meself to know. ‘You’ve been mortal kind to me,’ he says. ‘Kind!’ I said. ‘’Twixt us?’ But ’e kep’ all on tellin’ me ’ow kind I’d been an’ ’e’d never forget it all his days. I held it from off o’ me for three evenin’s, because I would not believe. Then ’e talked about not bein’ satisfied with ’is job in the stables, an’ the men there puttin’ tricks on ’im, an’ all they lies which a man tells when ’e’s leavin’ ye. I heard ’im out, neither ’elpin’ nor ’inderin’. At the last, I took off a liddle brooch which he’d give me an’ I says: ‘Dat’ll do. I ain’t askin’ na’un.’ An’ I turned me round an’ walked off to me own sufferin’s. ’E didn’t make ’em worse. ’E didn’t come nor write after that. ’E slipped off ’ere back ’ome to ’is mother again.”
“An’ ’ow often did ye look for ’en to come back?” Mrs. Fettley demanded mercilessly.
“More’n once—more’n once! Goin’ over the streets we’d used, I thought de very pave-stones ’ud shruck out under me feet.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Fettley. “I dunno but dat don’t ’urt as much as aught else. An’ dat was all ye got?”
“No. ’Twadn’t. That’s the curious part, if you’ll believe it, Liz.”