“In the bottom of the well!” replied Andy, laughing till his side ached. “O, ho, ho! why don't you bring some water in a thimble, and put the well out? O, ho, ho! Mother Quirk!”
There was fire in the old woman's eyes just then, if not in the well. It flashed out of them like two little streams of lightning out of two little jet-black clouds. She lifted her crutch, and I am not sure but she would have struck Andy with it, if she had not been too lame to catch him.
“Put the well out, ho, ho, ho!” laughed Andy, hopping away.
“I would put you in, if I could get hold of you!” said Mother Quirk, shaking her crutch at him. “You wouldn't be dancing around so on that foot of yours, if I hadn't cured it for you, and this is the thanks I get for it!”
That made Andy feel rather ashamed; for he began to see how ungrateful it was in him to play the old woman such a trick.
“It isn't the first time you've made me run for nothing, with my poor old crutch,” she went on, as he stopped laughing. “The other day you told me your mother was sick abed, and wanted to see me; and I left everything and hobbled over here; and didn't I find her ironing clothes in the kitchen, as well a woman as she ever was in her life, you little rogue!”
Andy laughed again at the recollection. “You was smoking your pipe,” said he, “with your old black cat in your lap, and 't was fun to see you jump up and catch your crutch!”
“Fun to you! but do you think of my poor old bones? I'm almost a hundred years old,” said Mother Quirk; “and shall I tell you what I've learnt all this time? I've learnt that the meanest thing in the world is to treat ill those who treat you kindly; and that the worst thing is lying.”
Andy was sobered again, and the old woman continued:—
“What if everybody and everything should lie? What if we could never know when to believe what our friends and neighbors tell us? What if my crutch should lie, and, when I lean on it, break and let me fall?”