it’s the doctors, and now it’s the nurse, and now it’s the inquest, till I declare I’m a'most moithered. She wants to know where she can get a old newspaper with the history of it in, but I can’t tell who keeps ’em unless Mrs. Fitch at the Lion do. ‘You won’t say nothing to nobody, as I’ve asked you these questions about Mrs. Crane, I’ve a reason not,’ says she to me last night. ‘Mum, you may put your faith in me as I won’t,’ says I.”
“And you have gone and told me to-day!” retorted Judith.
“But you are safe, you are, Judy, and won’t repeat it, I know. You were one of us with her, too. I thought to myself this morning, ‘Now, if I could see Judy Ford, I’d tell her this;’ but I wouldn’t open my lips to nobody else: and shan’t, as the widder has asked me not. That other widder, Gould, I wouldn’t furnish with a hint of it, if it was to save my life; she’s such a magpie, it would be over the town the next hour if she got hold of it.”
“Does she mean to live here all alone?” retotred Judith.
“I suppose so. She has a woman in to clean, and puts out her washing. The child’s a sickly little fellow: I don’t think he’ll make old bones. Come and see him.”
Mrs. Pepperfly rose and sailed in-doors; Judith followed. Upon a rude sort of bed on the parlour floor, which opened from the kitchen, and that opened from the garden, after the manner of cottages, lay a boy asleep; a fair, quiet-looking child, with light flaxen hair falling over his features. Judith looked at him, and looked again; she was struck with his likeness to somebody, but could not for the life of her recollect to whom.
“He has got a white swelling in his knee,” said Mrs. Pepperfly. “Leastways, I’m sure it’s coming into one.”
“A white swelling in his knee? Poor little fellow! that’s dangerous.”
“Kills youngsters nineteen times out of twenty,” returned the nurse, with professional equanimity.
“How thin and white he is,” exclaimed Judith. “How his forehead’s drawn! Whenever you see that lined forehead in a child, you may be sure it comes from long-endured pain.”
“His mother says he has never been strong. Take a wee drop short, Judy?” continued Mrs. Pepperfly insinuatingly, as she produced a small bottle from some unseen receptacle beneath her capacious petticoats.
“Not I,” answered Judith. “I’d rather pour it down the garden than down my throat: and I must be off, or I don’t know what time I shall get back, and my lady will say I have been gossiping.”
Judith proceeded on her way, and executed her commission with Lady Jane’s pensioners. As she returned, she saw a stranger seated in the chair Mrs. Pepperfly had occupied, but which was now drawn close to the cottage in the shade; a respectable looking widow woman of fifty years. The child lay in her arms, still asleep, and Mrs. Pepperfly had disappeared. Could Judith’s eyes have penetrated inside the cottage, she would have seen her comfortably stretched out on an arm-chair, overcome either by the sun or the bottle, and fast asleep as a church.
Judith scanned the hard features of the stranger, and remembered them, having probably been assisted thereunto by the conversation with the nurse. An impulse prompted her to enter the gate and speak.
“Good afternoon. I think I have seen you before.”
The stranger scanned her in turn, but did not recognise her.
“May be,” she quietly replied. “I don’t remember you.”
“I was the young woman who was so much with that poor lady, Mrs. Crane, during the few days she lay ill.”
Intelligence, glad intelligence, flashed into the stranger’s face. “I am glad to see you,” she exclaimed. “I wonder you remembered me.”
“You are Mrs. Smith, who came down and took away the baby.”
“Yes, I am. But now I’d rather it wasn’t spoken of, if you’d oblige me. If it got about, I should have the whole parish up here, wanting to know what I can’t tell them; and I have another reason besides. Mrs. What’s-her-name, the fat nurse, says nothing has been heard as to who the young lady was, and people would be asking me. I could not answer them; I don’t know anything to tell; so I’d rather not be questioned.”
“Where’s the baby?” inquired Judith, believing as little of the last words as she chose.
“Dead.”
“Is it, indeed! Well, ’twas but a little mite. I thought perhaps this was it.”
“This is mine,” said Mrs. Smith. “And a great sufferer he is, poor thing. He has always been weakly.”
“He seems to sleep well,” observed Judith.
“That’s because he gets no sleep at night. Every afternoon he’s dead asleep, so I put him down a mattress in the kitchen or parlour, or wherever I may happen to be, for he don’t like to go away from me. Why, if that child