came here, it’s my firm belief, just to find out the rights and the wrongs about the death of that poor young lady.”
“What young lady?”
“Why, that poor creature that the poisoned draught was gave to. She———"
“Who is she? Where does she come from?” interrupted Judith, aroused to interest.
“I’ll just tell ye about it,” said Mrs. Pepperfly, “but if you go to ask me who she is, and what she is, and where she comes from, I can’t tell; for I don’t know any more nor the babby that has not yet got its life’s breath into it. My missis that I nursed last didn’t get strong as soon as she ought, so it was settled she should go over to Great Wennock and stop a week or two with her relatives, and I went to take her there; it were Mrs. Tupper, the butcher’s wife, and the babby died a week old, which I daresay you heered on. We went over on a Tuesday morning in the omnibus, and it’s the first time I’ve been in the new omnibus or along the new road, for I’m no traveller, as is well known, which it’s beautiful and smooth they both is, and gives no jolts. I took my missis on to her mother’s, carrying her parcel of clothes for her, and I had a good dinner with ’em—a lovely shoulder o’ mutton and inion sauce, and was helped three times to beer. After that, I goes back to the station, which it’s not three minutes’ walk, and sits myself in the omnibus agen it started to come home; it were waiting, you see, for the London train. Well, it came in, the train, and there got into the omnibus a widder and a little boy and some luggage, and that was all. She begun a talking to me, asking if I knowed any lady living about here o’ the name of Crane. ‘No, mum,’ says I, ‘I never knowed but one lady o’ that name, and I didn’t know much of her, for it’s eight year ago, and she died promiscuous.’ ‘How do you mean?’ says she, a snapping of me up short, as if she’d lost her breath. Well, Judith, one word led to another, and I told her all about the lady’s death in Palace Street, she a listening to me all the time as if her eyes were coming out of her head with wonder. I never see a body so eager.”
“Who is she?” asked Judith.
“I tell ye I don’t know. I’m sure o’ one thing, though—that she knowed that poor lady, and is come to the place to ferret out what she can about the death.”
“How is it that she is living in this cottage?” returned Judith, completely absorbed in the tale.
“I’m coming to it, if you’ll let me,” answered Mrs. Pepperfly. “I never see a body interrupt as you do, Judith. We talked on, the widder and me, till we come to South Wennock, and got out at the Red Lion. With that she looks about her, like a person in a quandary, up the street and down the street, and then she stretches out her hand and points. ‘That’s the way to the house where the lady was lying,’ says she; ‘And you’re right, mum,’ says I, ‘for it just is.’ ‘I wonder whether them same lodgings is to let?’ says she; ‘if so, they’d suit me.’ So upon that I tolled her, Judith, what every body knows, that the lodgings was not to let, through the widder Gould keeping of the parlours for herself now, having had a income left her, and the new curate occupying of her drawing-room. Well, then she asked me did I know of a cottage to let, where there was plenty of fresh air about it, her child being poorly, and I cast it over in my mind and thought of this—which it belongs you know to Tupper hisself, and them be his fields at the back where he keeps his beastesses.”
“And she took it?”
“She looked at it that same afternoon, and she went straight off to Tupper and took it of him, paying three pound ten down for the first quarter’s rent, for she said she’d not bother him with no references, and then she asked me where she could buy or hire a bit of second hand furniture, and I took her off to Knagg the broker’s, and she got what she wanted. She invited me to stop with her, but I couldn’t, for I had agreed to be at Tupper’s and look after the children while his wife was away, and the widder said, then come up to her as soon as I was at liberty. Which I was a day ago, through Tupper’s wife returning home hearty, and I come up here, and she has asked me to stop till I’m called out again, which it’ll be in a day or two I expect, and happens to be Knaggs’s wife—and I thought it uncommon genteel and perlite of her, Judy; and so here I am, a enjoying of myself in the country air.”
“And in the sun also,” said Judith. “You’ll get your face browner than it is.”
“Tain’t often I gets the chance of sitting in it out o'doors, so I thought I’d take advantage of it when I could, and I don’t care whether I’m brown or white.”
“But why do you think the person came to find out about the young lady?”
“Look here,” cried Mother Pepperfly, “I can see as far through a milestone as most folks, and I argue why should she invite me here, a stranger (though it were perlite to do it), unless she wanted to get something out of me. Not a blessed minute, Judy, have I been in the cottage, and I got here at two o’clock yesterday, but she has been a questioning of me about it: now it’s the draught, and now