Part 7 (1/2)
”Surely it is not your husband? He looked better than usual this morning when he came around to the White House, and he had as fine a catch of fish as I have seen this summer.”
”Yea, himself's all right.”
”Then it must be Leonard; but I am sure he is a boy of whom any mother might be proud.”
”Proud? Yea, but many's the proud heart is the sore heart.”
”Tell me all about it,” said her young visitor, laying her delicate hand on the red fingers which still clasped the bone-handled steel knife. Mrs. Davitt looked down for a moment in silence, playing with the bent joint of her stiff third finger, then she broke out with a fierceness in curious contrast to her usual gentle speech.
”It's that Tilly Marsden. Bad luck to her for a bowld hussy! She's put the insult on Leonard.”
”The insult?”
”Yea, 'tis the same as an insult for all the neighbors to take notice of, whin a gurrl ez hez been kapin' company with a man fur goin' on two years, walks by him now with her nose in the air, lek wan wuz too good to be shpakin' with the praste himself.”
”Don't be too hard on Tilly, Mrs. Davitt,” remonstrated Winifred, soothingly. ”Perhaps she is fond of Leonard still, but does not want him to feel too sure of her. I dare say you were a little like that yourself, when you were a girl.”
”Thrue fer ye, me dear!” Mrs. Davitt answered, with that delightful Irish readiness to be diverted from her woes to a more cheerful frame of mind. ”Thrue fer ye! I'd never let Michael be sayin' me heart wuz caught before ever he'd shpread the net.”
”Then, depend upon it, Tilly feels the same.”
”Mebbe it's the thruth you're afther findin' out; but I misthrust, and it's meself will never fergive her if she breaks the heart of the best by in the counthry.”
The possibility was too much for the sorrowful mother. She threw her ap.r.o.n over her head, and abandoned herself once more to despair, swaying to and fro disconsolately in the black wooden chair from the back of which the gilt had been half rubbed away by quarter of a century of rocking.
”Do you think it could possibly do any good for me to talk with Leonard?” Winifred ventured, quite dubious in her own mind of the wisdom of the proceeding.
”Ow, if yez would, 'twould like be the savin' o' the by. He'll not bear any of us to shpake wid him at all at all.”
”Very well then, I will try to get him to talk about it. Only don't be disappointed if I do not succeed! The chances are that he will not listen to me.”
”Not listen to yoursilf, is it!” cried Mrs. Davitt, once more transported to the heights of hope. ”Sure, the saints in Hiven would lay down their harps to hear your swate vice. Yes, and aven to look at ye, as ye shtand there, in that white dhress, jist like what wan o'
thimsilves 'ud be wearin'! How becomin' ye are to your clothes!”
Winifred smiled at the subtle flattery; but before she could muster an appropriate acknowledgment, she caught sight of Leonard loitering at the gate.
”There is Leon now; I will ask him to walk part way home with me. It is growing dark, and you know,” she added, laughing, ”how timid I am!”
Mrs. Davitt smiled in answer to the laugh, for Winifred's daring was the talk of the countryside. She dried her eyes, and peered over her spectacles at her visitor as she picked her way among the chickens, feathered and human, who thronged about the doorstep, to the spot where Leonard stood, listlessly hanging over the gate gazing idly up and down the road.
Mrs. Davitt's heart beat anxiously as she marked the girl stop to speak to him, and when at last she saw him turn and walk beside her up the road, followed suspiciously by Paddy with the basket in his mouth, she burst out into a tearful torrent of joy and thanksgiving.
CHAPTER V
THE OLD SHOP
”Ah! poor Real Life, which I love, can I make others share the delight I find in thy foolish and insipid face?”