“It is I, Mary Pack; I’ve brought you something from aunt which she thought you would like to have.”
The bars were withdrawn.
“Come in!” said the same voice, and the door was cautiously opened.
Mary, without hesitation, entered in time to see a thin old man, in a tattered threadbare great-coat, with a red woollen cap on his head, and slippered feet, his stockings hanging about his ankles, totter back to an arm-chair from which he had risen, by the side of a small wood fire on which a pot was boiling.
“That’s all I’ve got for my dinner, with a few potatoes, but it’s enough to keep body and soul together, and what more does a wretched being like me want?” he said in a querulous voice.
“I have brought you something nice, as aunt knows you can’t cook anything of the sort yourself, and you may eat it with more appetite than you can the potatoes,” said Mary, placing the contents of the basket in some cracked plates on a rickety three-legged table which stood near the old man’s chair.
He eagerly eyed the tempting-looking pudding, a nicely cooked chop, and a delicious jelly. “Yes, that’s more like what I once used to have,” he muttered. “Thank you, thank you, little girl. I cannot buy such things for myself, but I am glad to get them from others. Sit down, pray do, after your walk,” and he pointed to a high-backed oak chair, of very doubtful stability and covered with dust. He saw that Mary on that account hesitated to sit down, so rising he shambled forward and wiped it with an old cotton handkerchief which he drew out of his pocket. “There, now it’s all clean and nice; you must sit down and rest, and see me eat the food, so that you may tell your aunt I sold none of it. The people say that I have parted with my coat off my back and the shoes from my feet, but do not believe them; if I did, it was on account of my poverty.”
Mary made no reply; it appeared to her that the old man was contradicting himself, and she did not wish to inquire too minutely into the matter.
“This pudding must have cost a great deal,” he continued, as he ate it mouthful by mouthful; “there’s the flour, the milk, the raisins, and the sugar and spice, and other ingredients. Your aunt must be a rich woman to afford so dainty a dish for a poor man like me?”
“No, I do not think Aunt Sally is at all rich, but she saves what little she can to give to the sick and needy; she heard that you were ill, Mr Shank, and had no one to care for you.”