“Well, sir, I’m sure I don’t know what to say. She is a lady, and it wouldn’t do to send her butchers’ meat across, would it? I’ll tell you what we could do, sir; I could kill one o’ my fowls and leave it with my compliments, pretending I had killed some yesterday, and wished her, as a neighbour, to taste my fattening.”
“That will do! But, instead of killing your fowls, take this half-sovereign and run at once to the poulterer’s, and buy a couple of pullets. You can then take them across, and she will suppose they are your own rearing. Will you do this?”
“With the greatest of pleasure, sir; and I’m sure you must have a very kind heart to take so much interest in poor folks.”
And Mrs. Parrot ran off for her bonnet, and was presently hurrying down the road with a market-basket on her arm, and her untied bonnet-strings streaming over her shoulders.
Holdsworth waited impatiently for her return, whilst Nelly, who had finished dinner, toddled about the room, gazing with round earnest eyes into the recesses, and the cupboards, and at the shepherds on the mantelpiece, and the yellow roses on the mat.
In ten minutes’ time Mrs. Parrot came back with her face flushed with the heat and exercise, and darted into the house as though she had swept half a jeweller’s shop into her basket and was flying for dear life.
“There, sir, what do you think of these?” she exclaimed, dragging a pair of handsomely-floured pullets out of the basket and holding them at arm’s length, as though they were a pair of ear-rings. “Aren’t they beauties, sir?”
“How can I send them across? Will you take them?”
“Oh yes. I can jest leave ’em at the door wi’ Mrs. Parrot’s compliments. She’ll be sure to guess that they’re my rearin’, and save me from an untruth, though my religion is none so fine, thank God, that I should be afeard to tell a kind o’ white lie to help any poor creature as wanted.”