Her unresentful acceptance of things was at once significant and moving.Betty found her amazing.What she lived on it was not easy to understand.She seemed rather like a cheerful old bird, getting up each unprovided-for morning, and picking up her sustenance where she found it.
"There's more in the sayin' `the Lord pervides' than a good many thinks," she said with a small chuckle, marked more by a genial and comfortable sense of humour than by an air of meritoriously quoting the vicar."He DO."She paid one and threepence a week in rent for her cottage, and this was the most serious drain upon her resources.
She apparently could live without food or fire, but the rent must be paid."An' I do get a bit be'ind sometimes," she confessed apologetically, "an' then it's a trouble to get straight."Her cottage was one of a short row, and she did odd jobs for the women who were her neighbours.There were always babies to be looked after, and "bits of 'elp" needed, sometimes there were "movings" from one cottage to another, and "confinements" were plainly at once exhilarating and enriching.
Her temperamental good cheer, combined with her experience, made her a desirable companion and assistant.She was engagingly frank.
"When they're new to it, an' a bit frightened, I just give 'em a cup of 'ot tea, an' joke with 'em to cheer 'em up,"she said."I says to Charles Jenkins' wife, as lives next door, `come now, me girl, it's been goin' on since Adam an' Eve, an' there's a good many of us left, isn't there?' An' a fine boy it was, too, miss, an' 'er up an' about before 'er month."She was paid in sixpences and spare shillings, and in cups of tea, or a fresh-baked loaf, or screws of sugar, or even in a garment not yet worn beyond repair.And she was free to run in and out, and grow a flower or so in her garden, and talk with a neighbour over the low dividing hedge.
"They want me to go into the `Ouse,' " reaching the dangerous subject at last."They say I'll be took care of an'
looked after.But I don't want to do it, miss.I want to keep my bit of a 'ome if I can, an' be free to come an' go.
I'm eighty-three, an' it won't be long.I 'ad a shilling a week from the parish, but they stopped it because they said I ought to go into the `Ouse.' "She looked at Betty with a momentarily anxious smile.
"P'raps you don't quite understand, miss," she said."It'll seem like nothin' to you--a place like this.""It doesn't," Betty answered, smiling bravely back into the old eyes, though she felt a slight fulness of the throat."Iunderstand all about it."
It is possible that old Mrs.Welden was a little taken aback by an attitude which, satisfactory to her own prejudices though it might be, was, taken in connection with fixed customs, a trifle unnatural.
"You don't mind me not wantin' to go?" she said.
"No," was the answer, "not at all."
Betty began to ask questions.How much tea, sugar, soap, candles, bread, butter, bacon, could Mrs.Welden use in a week?
It was not very easy to find out the exact quantities, as Mrs.
Welden's estimates of such things had been based, during her entire existence, upon calculation as to how little, not how much she could use.
When Betty suggested a pound of tea, a half pound--the old woman smiled at the innocent ignorance the suggestion of such reckless profusion implied.
"Oh, no! Bless you, miss, no! I couldn't never do away with it.A quarter, miss--that'd be plenty--a quarter."Mrs.Welden's idea of "the best," was that at two shillings a pound.Quarter of a pound would cost sixpence (twelve cents, thought Betty).A pound of sugar would be twopence, Mrs.Welden would use half a pound (the riotous extravagance of two cents).Half a pound of butter, "Good tub butter, miss," would be ten pence three farthings a pound.
Soap, candles, bacon, bread, coal, wood, in the quantities required by Mrs.Welden, might, with the addition of rent, amount to the dizzying height of eight or ten shillings.
"With careful extravagance," Betty mentally summed up, "I might spend almost two dollars a week in surrounding her with a riot of luxury."She made a list of the things, and added some extras as an idea of her own.Life had not afforded her this kind of thing before, she realised.She felt for the first time the joy of reckless extravagance, and thrilled with the excitement of it.
"You need not think of Brexley Union any more," she said, when she, having risen to go, stood at the cottage door with old Mrs.Welden."The things I have written down here shall be sent to you every Saturday night.I will pay your rent.""Miss--miss!" Mrs.Welden looked affrighted."It's too much, miss.An' coals eighteen pence a hundred!""Never mind," said her ladyship's sister, and the old woman, looking up into her eyes, found there the colour Mount Dunstan had thought of as being that of bluebells under water.
"I think we can manage it, Mrs.Welden.Keep yourself as warm as you like, and sometime I will come and have a cup of tea with you and see if the tea is good.""Oh! Deary me!" said Mrs.Welden."I can't think what to say, miss.It lifts everythin'--everythin'.It's not to be believed.It's like bein' left a fortune."When the wicket gate swung to and the young lady went up the lane, the old woman stood staring after her.And here was a piece of news to run into Charley Jenkins' cottage and tell--and what woman or man in the row would quite believe it?