meet it, an’ you’ll come an’ ’ave a nice cup o’ tea along o’ me. Now do, ’m!”
But Mrs. Stone shook her ancient head.
“I never was one to gad,” said she, with pious pride. “At Kingsdown near by Walmer were I born, an’ never beyond Deal did I go, which it were but a matter o’ three mile—an’ quite fur enough, too, of a ’ot day.”
“Well, but then you come out to New Zealand?” pleaded Mrs. Nye.
“Aye, an’ that were a matter o’ twel’ thousan’ mile, if the tales they used fer to tell o’ shipboard was true—which they wasn’t, all on ’em—an’ ain’t that gaddin’ enough fer a lifetime?” demanded Mrs. Stone with dignity. “No, no, dear—thankin’ you kindly all the same, I’m sure. . . . There’s another thing,” she added slowly. “Things does change to you so, an’ you do change so to things. There was a friend o’ mine, an’ she went back’ ’Ome after thretty year away, an’ they’d changed, an’ she’d changed, an’ there wasn’t one soul of ’em all as knew ’er, nor yet ’er a soul, excep’—who d’ye think? the village loony! He hadn’t changed, d’ye see, neither in his looks nor yet ’is outlooks, ’cause ’e hadn’t never growed on. But my very vittles is changed to me,” she went on plaintively, “an’ so ’ow do I know as the sea itself ’ud be the old sea to me now? Aye, dear me, ’tis all change, life is! Only the dead as doesn’t change—an’ the loonies, as grows to a bit o’ growth, an’ then stops, an’ never grows on. Changes, changes—aye, dear, aye, dear. . . .” Her voice grew so murmuring and vacant, that Mrs. Nye told herself she had tired the old lady out, and got up to go.
