“Yes, sir. As blue as a baby’s, sir, and as clear, though she’s past eighty. Oh, sir! you can depend upon old Mrs. Hutchinson as to who’s been here, and even what they’ve thought about it. The village just flocks to her to tell her the news and get advice about things. She’d know.”
It was as a result of this that on his return from Stone Hover he dismissed the carriage at the gates and walked through them to make a visit in the village. Old Mrs. Hutchinson, sitting knitting in her chair behind the abnormally flourishing fuchsias, geraniums, and campanula carpaticas in her cottage-window, looked between the banked-up flower-pots to see that Mr. Temple Barholm had opened her wicket-gate and was walking up the clean-brushed path to her front door. When he knocked she called out in the broad Lancashire she had always spoken, “Coom in!” When he entered he took off his hat and looked at her, friendly but hesitant, and with the expression of a young man who has not quite made up his mind as to what he is about to encounter.
“I’m Temple Temple Barholm, Mrs. Hutchinson,” he announced.
“I know that,” she answered. “Not that tha looks loike the Temple Barholms, but I’ve been watchin’ thee walk an’ drive past here ever since tha coom to the place.”
She watched him steadily with an astonishingly limpid pair of old eyes. They were old and young at the same time; old because they held deeps of wisdom, young because they were so alive and full of question.
“I don’t know whether I ought to have come to see you or not,” he said.
“Well, tha’st coom,” she replied, going on with her knitting. “Sit thee doun and have a bit of a chat.”
“Say!” he broke out. “Ain’t you going to shake hands with me?” He held his hand out impetuously. He knew he was all right if she’d shake hands.
“Theer’s nowt agen that, surely,” she answered, with a shrewd bit of a smile. She gave him her hand. “If I was na stiff in my legs, it’s my place to get up an’ mak’ thee a curtsey, but th’ rheumatics has no respect even for th’ lord o’ th’ manor.”
“If you got up and made me a curtsey,” Tembarom said, “I should throw a fit. Say, Mrs. Hutchinson, I bet you know that as well as I do.”