'Then, Mehalah, the only chance that remains, is to get the money from the Mersea parson.'
'He cannot help us.'
'There is no harm trying.'
The day on which Mrs. De Witt had threatened to come had passed, without her appearing. True it had blown great guns, and there had been storms of rain. Mrs. Sharland hoped that the danger was over. The primitive inhabitants of the marshes had dwelt on piles, she built on straws. Some people do not realise a danger till it is on them and they cannot avert it. Mrs. Sharland was one of these. She liked her grievance, and loved to moan over it; if she had not a real one she invented one, just as children celebrate funerals over dolls. She had been so accustomed to lament over toy troubles that when a real trouble threatened she was unable to measure its gravity.
She was a limp and characterless woman. Mehalah had inherited the rich red blood of her grandparents, and Mrs. Sharland had assimilated only the water, and this flowed feebly through her pale veins. Her nature was parasitic. She could not live on her own root, but must adhere to a character stronger than herself. She had hung on and smothered her husband, and now she dragged at her daughter. Mehalah must stand upright or Mrs. Sharland would crush her to the ground. There are women like articles of furniture that will 'wobble' unless a penny or a wedge of wood be put under their feet. Mrs. Sharland was always crying out for some trifle to steady her.
Mehalah did not share her mother's anticipations that the danger had passed with the day, that Mrs De Witt's purpose had given way to kinder thoughts; she was quite sure that she would prove relentless and push matters to extremities. It was this certainty which drove her to act once more on her mother's suggestion, and go to the Mersea Rectory, to endeavour to borrow the sum of money needed to relieve them from immediate danger.
She found the parson in his garden without his coat, which hung on the hedge, making a potatoe pie for the winter.
He was on all fours packing the tubers in straw. His boots and gaiters were clogged with clay.
'Hallo!' he exclaimed as Mehalah came up. 'You are the girl they call Glory? Look here. I want you to see my kidneys. Did you ever see the like, come clean out of the ground without canker. Would you like a peck? I'll give them you. Boil beautiful.'
'I want to speak with you, sir.'