“Then tell me all about her,” I said.
“Well, there ain’t very much to tell,” responded the old man. “I don’t know who was ’er father. She came to my sister-in-law as a nurse-child from London when she was about two years old. They say ’er father and mother were rich people. But Fanny Stanion, my sister-in-law, who lived over at Deenethorpe, brought her up, and got paid for it by a lawyer in Oundle. You don’t know Deenethorpe. It’s about five miles from here.”
“Near Deene?” I suggested, for I had been photographing in Lady Cardigan’s beautiful park.
“Yes, close by,” was the labourer’s reply. “Fanny had ’er with ’er nigh on twelve years and was like a mother to ’er, and often brought ’er over to Rockingham to see us. Then, when Fanny died, she was sent back to London, an’ some lady, I believe, took charge of ’er and sent her to boardin’ school somewhere in Devonshire. I ain’t seen little Dolly these seven years till the other day when she came to my cottage. My! Ain’t she grown to be a fine young ’ooman? I didn’t know ’er ag’in,” and the old man leaned upon the rail and laughed. Men who work in the fields at all hours and in hot and cold weather age very early; the furrows grow deep on their faces and the skin is crossed and recrossed with multitudinous lines like a spider’s web, the spine gets bent from the long hours of stooping over the earth, and the heat and the damp and the frost all turn by turn enter into the bones, and stiffen and cramp them before old age is due.
“Is nothing known regarding her parentage?” I asked. “Have you never heard any story about her?”
“No, nothing. The lawyer in Oundle who used to pay Fanny monthly probably knew all about it, but he’s dead now. Fanny had the child brought to her through answerin’ an advertisement in the Stamford Mercury. My poor wife used to be particular fond o’ little Dolly.”
“And why did she call to see you? Had she an object in doing so?”
“I suppose she wanted to visit the cottage ag’in,” was the old man’s answer. “But she’s growed such a fine London lady that I was quite taken aback when she told me she was Dolly Drummond.”
“Drummond! Why, that’s not her name,” I cried. “I mean Miss Bristowe.”
“You said the young lady who lives at Mr. Page’s, eh?”