HOW THAT WIDOW GOT THE "OLD CAT" AWAY TO STRIDES COTTAGE. MR. BRANTOCK'S HORSE. ELIZABETH-NEXT-DOOR, AND THE BIT OF FIRE SHE MADE. HOW TOFT THE GIPSY SPOTTED A LIKENESS, AND REPAIRED THE GLASS TOBY HAD AIMED AT. HOW OLD MAISIE'S ACQUAINTANCE WITH HER DAUGHTER GREW TO FRIENDSHIP. AND HER DAUGHTER SHOWED HER GRANDFATHER'S MILL. HOW COULD THIS MILL BE YOUR GRANDFATHER'S, WHEN IT WAS MY FATHER'S? BUT SEE HOW SMALL IT WAS! TWO ARMS LONG, FIFTY YEARS AGO! AND NOW!... A RESTLESS WAKING AND A DARING EXCURSION. ONLY THE HOUSE-DOG ABOUT! ON THE FENDER! SEE THERE—AN ARM AND A HALF LONG ONLY—IN FACT, LESS!
Old Maisie waked late, and no wonder! Or, more properly, she slept late, and had to be waked. Mrs. Masham did it, saying at the same time to a person in her company:—"Oh no, Mrs. Thrale—she's all right!—we've no call to be frightened yet a while." She added, as signs of life began to return:—"She'll be talking directly, you'll see."
Then the sleeper became conscious, and roused herself, to the point of exclaiming:—"Oh dear, what is it?" A second effort made her aware that her agreeable visitor of yesterday was at her bed's foot, and that her awakener was saying at her side:—"Now you tell her. She'll hear you now." Mrs. Masham seemed to assume official rights as a go-between, with special powers of interpretation.
Widow Thrale looked more Pomona-like than ever in the bright sunshine that was just getting the better of the hoar-frost. She held in her hand a letter, to which she seemed to cling as a credential—a sort of letter of marque, so to speak. "'Tis a bidding from her young ladyship," said the interpreter collaterally. She herself said, in the soothing voice of yesterday:—"From her young ladyship, who has gone to away London unforetold, last night. She will have me get you to my mother's, to make a stay with us for a while. And my mother will make you kindly welcome, for the little boy Dave's sake, and for her ladyship's satisfaction." She read the letter of marque, as far as "take great care of her, till you hear from me."
"I will get up and go," said the old lady. Then she appeared disconcerted at her own alacrity, saying to the housekeeper:—"But you have been so kind to me!"
"What her young ladyship decides," said Mrs. Masham, "it is for us to abide by." She referred to this as a sort of superseding truth, to which all personal feelings—gratitude, ingratitude, resentment, forgiveness—should be subordinated. It left open a claim to magnanimity, on her part, somehow. Further, she said she would tell Lupin to bring some breakfast for Mrs. Pilcher.
The task of getting the old lady up to take it seemed to devolve naturally on Widow Thrale, who accepted it discreetly and skilfully, explaining that Mr. Brantock's cart would wait an hour to oblige, and would go very easy along the road, not to shake. Old Maisie did not seem alarmed, on that score.
She had lain awake in the night in some terror of the day to come, alone with a household which appeared to have decided, though without open declaration, that she was a plaguy old cat. She had been roused from a final deep sleep to find that her Guardian Angel's last benediction to her had been to make the very arrangement she would have chosen for herself had she been put to it to make choice. That her mind had never mooted the point was a detail, which retrospect corrected. She was ashamed to find she was so glad to fly from Mrs. Masham and Company, and already began to be uneasy lest she had misjudged them. But then—a plaguy old cat!
However, the decision of this at present did not arise from the circumstances. What did was that, in less than the hour Mr. Brantock's cart could concede, she was seated therein, comfortably wrapped up, beside this really very nice and congenial saddler's relict, having been somehow dressed, breakfasted, and generally adjusted by hands which no doubt had acquired the sort of skill a hospital nurse gets—without the trenchant official demeanour which makes the patient shake in his shoes, if any—by her considerable experience of convalescents of all sorts and the smaller sizes.
Mr. Brantock's cart jogged steadily on by cross-cuts and by-roads at the dictation of parcels whose destinations Mr. Brantock's horse bore in mind, and chose the nearest way to, allowing his so-called driver to deliver them on condition that the consignees paid cash. His harness stood in the way of his doing so himself. Think what it was that was concealed from old Maisie and Widow Thrale respectively, as they travelled in Mr. Brantock's cart. The intensity of this mother's and daughter's ignorance of one another outwent the powers of mere language to tell.