Although Mrs. Marrable had gone away from home ostensibly to welcome into the world a great-grandchild, the announcement that one had arrived preceded her return nearly a week. Other instances might be adduced of very old matriarchs who have imagined themselves Juno, as she certainly did. Juno, one may reasonably suppose, did not feel free to depart until matters had been put on a comfortable footing. Of course, the goddess had advantages; omnipresence, for instance, or at least presence at choice. One official visit did not monopolize her. Old Mrs. Marrable—Granny Marrable par excellence—had but one available personality, and had to be either here or there, never everywhere! So Dave and another convalescent had Strides Cottage all to themselves and their ogress, for awhile.
The country air did wonders for the London child. This is always the case, and contains the truth that only strong children outlive their babyhood in London, and these become normal when they are removed to normal human conditions. Dave began becoming the robust little character Nature had intended him to be, and evidently would soon throw off the ill-effects of his accident, with perhaps a doubt about how long the leg would be stiff.
So by the time Granny Marrable returned into residence she was not confronted with an invalid still plausibly convalescent, but an eatable little boy, from the ogress point of view, who used a crutch when reminded of his undertaking to do so. Otherwise he preferred to neglect it; leaving it on chairs or on the settle by the fireplace, like Ariadne on Naxos; evidently feeling, when he was recalled to his duty towards it, as Theseus might have felt if remonstrated with by Minos for his desertion of his daughter. In reinstating it he would be acting for the crutch's sake. And why should he trouble to do this, when the other little boy, Marmaduke, who had nothing whatever the matter with his leg, was always ambitious to use this crutch, or scrutch. He was the Dionysos of the metaphor.
However, the crutch was not in question when Dave first set eyes on Granny Marrable. It was at half-past seven o'clock on a cold morning, when the last swallow had departed, and the skylarks were flagging, and the tragedy of the ash-leaves was close at hand, that Dave awoke reluctantly from a remote dream-world with Dolly in it, and Uncle Mo, and Aunt M'riar, and Mrs. Picture upstairs, to hear a voice, that at first seemed Mrs. Picture's in the dream, saying: "Well, my little gentleman, you do sleep sound!"
But it wasn't Mrs. Prichard's, or Picture's, voice; it was Granny Marrable's. For all her eighty years, she had walked from Costrell's farm, her great-grandson's birthplace, three miles off, or thereabouts; and had arrived at her own door, ten minutes since, quite fresh after an hour's walk. She was that sort of old woman.
Dave was almost as disconcerted as when he woke at the Hospital and saw no signs of his home, and no old familiar faces. He sat up in bed and wrestled with his difficulties, his eyelids being among the chief. If he rubbed them hard enough, no doubt the figure before him would cease to be Mrs. Picture, even as the other figure the dream had left had ceased to be Aunt M'riar, and had become Widow Thrale. Not but that he would have accepted her as Mrs. Picture, being prepared for almost anything since his accident, if it had not been for the expression, "My little gentleman," which quarrelled with her seeming identity. Oh no!—if he rubbed away hard enough at those eyes with his nightgown-sleeve, this little matter would right itself. Of course, Mrs. Picture would have called him Doyvy, or the name he gave that inflection to.
"Child!—you'll rub your pretty eyes out that fashion," said Granny Marrable. And she uncrumpled Dave's small nightgown-sleeve the eyes were in collision with, and disentangled their owner from the recesses of his bedclothes. Then Dave was quite convinced it was not Mrs. Picture, who was not so nearly strong as this dream-image, or waking reality.
"He'll come awake directly," said the younger widow. "He do sleep, Granny!" For Widow Thrale often called her aunt "Granny" as a tribute to her own offspring. Otherwise she thought of her as "Mother." Her own mother was only a half-forgotten fact, a sort of duplicate mother, who vanished when she was almost a baby. She continued:—"He goes nigh to eating up his pillow he does. There never was a little boy sounder; all night long not a move! Such a little slugabed I never!" And then this ogress—for she really was no better—was heartless enough to tickle Dave and kiss him, with an affectation of devouring him. And he, being tickled, had to laugh; and then was quite awake, for all the world as if he could never go to sleep again.
"I fought," said he, feeling some apology was due for his misapprehension, "I fought it was old Mrs. Picture on the top-landing in the hackicks."