“Ah, but,” Hobart said, smiling, unconscious of Nichola’s little eyes immovably fixed on his face, “but when they reach you out a hand people usually pinch by instinct instead of patting.”
At that Nichola’s little quick-lidded eyes began to wink, brows lifting. And, still leaning hands on knees:—
“Yah!” she said, “none of what you say is so.”
Nichola employs the indirect method about as habitually as do thunder and lightning. And in this directness of hers Hobart, that master of feint and parry, delights.
“No, Nichola?” he said, smiling, “no?”
She got stiffly erect, drawing her hands up her apron to her thighs, her eyes winking so fast that I marvel she could see at all.
“But the whole world helps along,” she said shrilly, “or else we should tear each other’s eyes out. What do I do, me? I do not put fruit peel in the waste paper to worrit the ragman. I do not put potato jackets in the stove to worrit the ashman. I do not burn the bones because I think of the next poor dog. What crumbs are left I lay always, always on the back fence for the birds. I kill no living thing but spiders—which the devil made. Our Lady knows I do very little. But if I was the men with pockets on I’d find a way! I’d find a way, me,” said Nichola, wagging her old gray head.
“Pockets?” Hobart repeated, puzzled.
“For the love of heaven, yes!” Nichola cried. “Pockets—money—give!” she illustrated in pantomime. “What can I do? On Thursday nights I take what sweets are in this house, what flowers are on all the plants, and I carry them to a hospital I know. If you could see how they wait for me on the beds! What can I do? The good God gave me almost no pockets. It is as he says,” she nodded to Pelleas, “Helping is why. Yah! None of what you say is so. Mem, I didn’t get no time to frost the nutcakes.”
“It doesn’t matter, Nichola—it doesn’t matter,” said I, holding hard to the arms of my chair. So that was where she went on her Thursday nights out ... so that was where the occasional blossoms on my plants....