Her hand shook more than
of old.
"You don't remember me, Mrs. Hosking?"
"What is it you say? You must speak a little louder, please, I'm deaf."
"You don't remember me?"
"No, I don't," she said composedly. "I'm gone terrible blind this last
year or two."
The Emigrant paid for his sweets and walked out. He had bought them
with a purpose, and now bent his steps down Market Street. At the foot
of the hill he paused before a row of white-washed cottages. A green
fence ran along their front, and a pebbled path; and here he found a
stout, matronly woman bent over a wash-tub.
"Does Mrs. Best live here?" he asked.
The woman withdrew about a dozen pins from her mouth and answered all in
one breath:--
"She isn't called Best any longer; she married agen five year ago;
second husbing, he died too; she doesn' live here any more."
With this she stuck the pins very deliberately, one by one, in the bosom
of her print gown, and plunged her hands into the wash-tub again.
The Emigrant stood nonplussed for a moment and scratched the back of his
head, tilting his soft hat still further forward on his nose.
"She used to be very fond of me when I was a boy," he said lamely.
"Yes?" The tone seemed to ask what business that could be of hers.
"She came as nurse to my mother when I was born. I suppose that made
her take a fancy to me."
"Ah, no doubt," replied the woman vaguely, and added, while she soaped
a long black stocking, "she did a lot o' that, one time and another.
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