Old Doby, who had tottered round the corner to pay his fellow gossip a
visit, was sitting by it, and old Mrs. Welden, clean as to cap and apron
and small purple shoulder shawl, had evidently been allaying his natural
anxiety as to the conduct of foreign sovereigns by reading in a loud
voice the "print" under the pictures in an illustrated paper.
This occupation had, however, been interrupted a few moments before Miss
Vanderpoel's arrival. Mrs. Bester, the neighbour in the next
cottage, had stepped in with her youngest on her hip and was talking
breathlessly. She paused to drop her curtsy as Betty entered, and old
Doby stood up and made his salute with a trembling hand,
"She'll know," he said. "Gentry knows the ins an' outs of gentry fust.
She'll know the rights."
"What has happened?"
Mrs. Bester unexpectedly burst into tears. There was an element in
the female villagers' temperament which Betty had found was frequently
unexpected in its breaking forth.
"He's down, miss," she said. "He's down with it crool bad. There'll be
no savin' of him--none."
Betty laid her package of sewing cotton and knitting wool quietly on the
blue and white checked tablecloth.
"Who--is he?" she asked.
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