4
Martha
When she opened her eyes in the morning it
was because \/ a young housemaid had come into her room to light
the fire and was kneeling on the hearth-rug raking out the cinders
noisily. Mary lay and watched her for a few moments and then began
to look about the room. She had never seen a room at all like it
and thought it curious and gloomy. The walls were covered with
tapestry with a forest scene embroidered on it. There were
fantastically dressed people under the trees and in the distance
there was a glimpse of the turrets of a castle. There were hunters
and horses and dogs and ladies. Mary felt as if she were in the
forest with them. Out of a deep window she could see a great
climbing stretch of land which seemed to have no trees on it, and
to look rather like an endless, dull, purplish sea.
“What is that?” she said, pointing out of the
window.
Martha, the young housemaid, who had just risen to
her feet, looked and pointed also.
“That there?” she said.
“Yes.”
“That’s th’ moor,” with a good-natured grin. “Does
tha’ like it?”
“No,” answered Mary. “I hate it.”
“That’s because tha’rt not used to it,” Martha
said, going back to her hearth. “Tha’ thinks it’s too big an’ bare
now. But tha’ will like it.”
“Do you?” inquired Mary.
“Aye, that I do,” answered Martha, cheerfully
polishing away at the grate. “I just love it. It’s none bare. It’s
covered wi’ growin’ things as smells sweet. It’s fair lovely in
spring an’ summer when th’ gorse an’ broom an’ heather’s in flower.
It smells o’ honey an’ there’s such a lot o’ fresh air—an’ th’ sky
looks so high an’ th’ bees an’ skylarks makes such a nice noise
hummin’ an’ singin’. Eh! I wouldn’t live away from th’ moor for
anythin’.”
Mary listened to her with a grave, puzzled
expression. The native servants she had been used to in India were
not in the least like this. They were obsequiousi
and servile and did not presume to talk to their masters as if they
were their equals. They made salaamsj and
called them “protector of the poor” and names of that sort. Indian
servants were commanded to do things, not asked. It was not the
custom to say “please” and “thank you” and Mary had always slapped
her Ayah in the face when she was angry. She wondered a little what
this girl would do if one slapped her in the face. She was a round,
rosy, good-natured-looking creature, but she had a sturdy way which
made Mistress Mary wonder if she might not even slap back—if the
person who slapped her was only a little girl.
“You are a strange servant,” she said from her
pillows, rather haughtily.
Martha sat up on her heels, with her blackingbrush
in her hand, and laughed, without seeming the least out of
temper.
“Eh! I know that,” she said. “If there was a grand
Missus at Misselthwaite I should never have been even one of th’
under housemaids. I might have been let to be scullery-maid but I’d
never have been let upstairs. I’m too common an’ I talk too much
Yorkshire. But this is a funny house for all it’s so grand. Seems
like there’s neither Master nor Mistress except Mr. Pitcher an’
Mrs. Medlock. Mr. Craven, he won’t be troubled about anythin’ when
he’s here, an’ he’s nearly always away. Mrs. Medlock gave me th’
place out o’ kindness. She told me she could never have done it if
Misselthwaite had been like other big houses.”
“Are you going to be my servant?” Mary asked, still
in her imperious little Indian way.
Martha began to rub her grate again.
“I’m Mrs. Medlock’s servant,” she said stoutly.
“An’ she’s Mr. Craven’s—but I’m to do the housemaid’s work up here
an’ wait on you a bit. But you won’t need much waitin’ on.”
“Who is going to dress me?” demanded Mary.
Martha sat up on her heels again and stared. She
spoke in broad Yorkshire in her amazement.
“Canna’ tha’ dress thysen!” she said.
“What do you mean? I don’t understand your
language,” said Mary.
“Eh! I forgot,” Martha said. “Mrs. Medlock told me
I’d have to be careful or you wouldn’t know what I was sayin’. I
mean can’t you put on your own clothes?”
“No,” answered Mary, quite indignantly. “I never
did in my life. My Ayah dressed me, of course.”
“Well,” said Martha, evidently not in the least
aware that she was impudent, “it’s time tha’ should learn. Tha’
cannot begin younger. It’ll do thee good to wait on thysen a bit.
My mother always said she couldn’t see why grand people’s children
didn’t turn out fair fools—what with nurses an bein’ washed an’
dressed an’ took out to walk as if they was puppies!”
“It is different in India,” said Mistress Mary
disdainfully. She could scarcely stand this.
But Martha was not at all crushed.
“Eh! I can see it’s different,” she answered almost
sympathetically. “I dare say it’s because there’s such a lot o’
blacks there instead o’ respectable white people. When I heard you
was comin’ from India I thought you was a black too.”
Mary sat up in bed furious.
“What!” she said. “What! You thought I was a
native. You—you daughter of a pig!”
Martha stared and looked hot.
“Who are you callin’ names?” she said. “You needn’t
be so vexed. That’s not th’ way for a young lady to talk. I’ve
nothin’ against th’ blacks. When you read about ’em in tracts
they’re always very religious. You always read as a black’s a man
an’ a brother. I’ve never seen a black an’ I was fair pleased to
think I was goin’ to see one close. When I come in to light your
fire this mornin’ I crep’ up to your bed an’ pulled th’ cover back
careful to look at you. An’ there you was,” disappointedly, “no
more black than me—for all you’re so yeller.”
Mary did not even try to control her rage and
humiliation.
“You thought I was a native! You dared! You don’t
know anything about natives! They are not people—they’re servants
who must salaam to you. You know nothing about India. You know
nothing about anything!”
She was in such a rage and felt so helpless before
the girl’s simple stare, and somehow she suddenly felt so horribly
lonely and far away from everything she understood and which
understood her, that she threw herself face downward on the pillows
and burst into passionate sobbing. She sobbed so unrestrainedly
that good-natured Yorkshire Martha was a little frightened and
quite sorry for her. She went to the bed and bent over her.
“Eh! you mustn’t cry like that there!” she begged.
“You mustn’t for sure. I didn’t know you’d be vexed. I don’t know
anythin’ about any thin‘—just like you said. I beg your pardon,
Miss. Do stop cryin’.”
There was something comforting and really friendly
in her queer Yorkshire speech and sturdy way which had a good
effect on Mary. She gradually ceased crying and became quiet.
Martha looked relieved.
“It’s time for thee to get up now” she said. “Mrs.
Medlock said I was to carry tha’ breakfast an’ tea an’ dinner into
th’ room next to this. It’s been made into a nursery for thee. I’ll
help thee on with thy clothes if tha’ll get out o’ bed. If th’
buttons are at th’ back tha’ cannot button them up tha’self.”
When Mary at last decided to get up, the clothes
Martha took from the wardrobe were not the ones she had worn when
she arrived the night before with Mrs. Medlock.
“Those are not mine,” she said. “Mine are
black.”
She looked the thick white wool coat and dress
over, and added with cool approval:
“Those are nicer than mine.”
“These are th’ ones tha’ must put on,” Martha
answered. “Mr. Craven ordered Mrs. Medlock to get ‘em in London. He
said ‘I won’t have a child dressed in black wanderin’ about like a
lost soul,’ he said. ‘It’d make the place sadder than it is. Put
color on her.’ Mother she said she knew what he meant. Mother
always knows what a body means. She doesn’t hold with black
hersel’.”
“I hate black things,” said Mary.
The dressing process was one which taught them both
something. Martha had “buttoned up” her little sisters and brothers
but she had never seen a child who stood still and waited for
another person to do things for her as if she had neither hands nor
feet of her own.
“Why doesn’t tha’ put on tha’ own shoes?” ’ she
said when Mary quietly held out her foot.
“My Ayah did it,” answered Mary, staring. “It was
the custom.”
She said that very often—“It was the custom.” The
native servants were always saying it. If one told them to do a
thing their ancestors had not done for a thousand years they gazed
at one mildly and said, “It is not the custom” and one knew that
was the end of the matter.
It had not been the custom that Mistress Mary
should do anything but stand and allow herself to be dressed like a
doll, but before she was ready for breakfast she began to suspect
that her life at Misselthwaite Manor would end by teaching her a
number of things quite new to her—things such as putting on her own
shoes and stockings, and picking up things she let fall. If Martha
had been a well-trained fine young lady’s maid she would have been
more subservient and respectful and would have known that it was
her business to brush hair, and button boots, and pick things up
and lay them away. She was, however, only an untrained Yorkshire
rustic who had been brought up in a moorland cottage with a swarm
of little brothers and sisters who had never dreamed of doing
anything but waiting on themselves and on the younger ones who were
either babies in arms or just learning to totter about and tumble
over things.
If Mary Lennox had been a child who was ready to be
amused she would perhaps have laughed at Martha’s readiness to
talk, but Mary only listened to her coldly and wondered at her
freedom of manner. At first she was not at all interested, but
gradually, as the girl rattled on in her good-tempered, homely way,
Mary began to notice what she was saying.
“Eh! you should see ‘em all,”she said. “There’s
twelve of us an’ my father only gets sixteen shilling a week. I can
tell you my mother’s put to it to get porridge for ’em all. They
tumble about on th’ moor an’ play there all day an’ mother says th’
air of th’ moor fattens ’em. She says she believes they eat th’
grass same as th’ wild ponies do. Our Dickon, he’s twelve years old
and he’s got a young pony he calls his own.”
“Where did he get it?” asked Mary.
“He found it on th’ moor with its mother when it
was a little one an’ he began to make friends with it an’ give it
bits o’ bread an’ pluck young grass for it. And it got to like him
so it follows him about an’ it lets him get on its back. Dickon’s a
kind lad an’ animals likes him.”
Mary had never possessed an animal pet of her own
and had always thought she should like one. So she began to feel a
slight interest in Dickon, and as she had never before been
interested in any one but herself, it was the dawning of a healthy
sentiment. When she went into the room which had been made into a
nursery for her, she found that it was rather like the one she had
slept in. It was not a child’s room, but a grown-up person’s room,
with gloomy old pictures on the walls and heavy old oak chairs. A
table in the center was set with a good substantial breakfast. But
she had always had a very small appetite, and she looked with
something more than indifference at the first plate Martha set
before her.
“I don’t want it,” she said.
“Tha’ doesn’t want thy porridge!” Martha exclaimed
incredulously.
“No.”
“Tha’ doesn’t know how good it is. Put a bit o’
treaclek on it
or a bit o’ sugar.”
“I don’t want it,” repeated Mary.
“Eh!” said Martha. “I can’t abide to see good
victuals go to waste. If our children was at this table they’d
clean it bare in five minutes.”
“Why?” said Mary coldly.
“Why!” echoed Martha. “Because they scarce ever had
their stomachs full in their lives. They’re as hungry as young
hawks an’ foxes.”
“I don’t know what it is to be hungry,” said Mary,
with the indifference of ignorance.
Martha looked indignant.
“Well, it would do thee good to try it. I can see
that plain enough,” she said outspokenly. “I’ve no patience with
folk as sits an’ just stares at good bread an’ meat. My word! don’t
I wish Dickon and Phil an’ Jane an’ th’ rest of ’em had what’s here
under their pinafores.”
“Why don’t you take it to them?” suggested
Mary.
“It’s not mine,” answered Martha stoutly. “An’ this
isn’t my day out. I get my day out once a month same as th’ rest.
Then I go home an’ clean up for mother an’ give her a day’s
rest.”
Mary drank some tea and ate a little toast and some
marmalade.
“You wrap up warm an’ run out an’ play you,” said
Martha. “It’ll do you good and give you some stomach for your
meat.”
Mary went to the window. There were gardens and
paths and big trees, but everything looked dull and wintry.
“Out? Why should I go out on a day like
this?”
“Well, if tha’ doesn’t go out tha’lt have to stay
in, an’ what has tha’ got to do?”
Mary glanced about her. There was nothing to do.
When Mrs. Medlock had prepared the nursery she had not thought of
amusement. Perhaps it would be better to go and see what the
gardens were like.
“Who will go with me?” she inquired.
Martha stared.
“You’ll go by yourself,” she answered. “You’ll have
to learn to play like other children does when they haven’t got
sisters and brothers. Our Dickon goes off on th’ moor by himself
an’ plays for hours. That’s how he made friends with th’ pony. He’s
got sheep on th’ moor that knows him, an’ birds as comes an’ eats
out of his hand. However little there is to eat, he always saves a
bit o’ his bread to coax his pets.”
It was really this mention of Dickon which made
Mary decide to go out, though she was not aware of it. There would
be birds outside though there would not be ponies or sheep. They
would be different from the birds in India and it might amuse her
to look at them.
Martha found her coat and hat for her and a pair of
stout little boots and she showed her her way downstairs.
“If tha’ goes round that way tha’ll come to th’
gardens,” she said, pointing to a gate in a wall of shrubbery.
“There’s lots o’ flowers in summer-time, but there’s nothin’
bloomin’ now.” She seemed to hesitate a second before she added,
“One of th’ gardens is locked up. No one has been in it for ten
years.”
“Why?” asked Mary in spite of herself Here was
another locked door added to the hundred in the strange
house.
“Mr. Craven had it shut when his wife died so
sudden. He won’t let no one go inside. It was her garden. He locked
th’ door an’ dug a hole and buried th’ key. There’s Mrs. Medlock’s
bell ringing—I must run.”
After she was gone Mary turned down the walk which
led to the door in the shrubbery She could not help thinking about
the garden which no one had been into for ten years. She wondered
what it would look like and whether there were any flowers still
alive in it. When she had passed through the shrubbery gate she
found herself in great gardens, with wide lawns and winding walks
with clipped borders. There were trees, and flower-beds, and
evergreens clipped into strange shapes, and a large pool with an
old gray fountain in its midst. But the flower-beds were bare and
wintry and the fountain was not playing. This was not the garden
which was shut up. How could a garden be shut up? You could always
walk into a garden.
She was just thinking this when she saw that, at
the end of the path she was following, there seemed to be a long
wall, with ivy growing over it. She was not familiar enough with
England to know that she was coming upon the kitchen-gardens where
the vegetables and fruit were growing. She went toward the wall and
found that there was a green door in the ivy, and that it stood
open. This was not the closed garden, evidently, and she could go
into it.
She went through the door and found that it was a
garden with walls all round it and that it was only one of several
walled gardens which seemed to open into one another. She saw
another open green door, revealing bushes and pathways between beds
containing winter vegetables. Fruit-trees were trained flat against
the wall, and over some of the beds there were glass frames. The
place was bare and ugly enough, Mary thought, as she stood and
stared about her. It might be nicer in summer when things were
green, but there was nothing pretty about it now.
Presently an old man with a spade over his shoulder
walked through the door leading from the second garden. He looked
startled when he saw Mary, and then touched his cap. He had a surly
old face, and did not seem at all pleased to see her—but then she
was displeased with his garden and wore her “quite contrary”
expression, and certainly did not seem at all pleased to see
him.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“One o’ th’ kitchen-gardens,” he answered.
There were trees.... and a large pool with an
old grey fountain in its midst
![003](/epubstore/B/F-H-Burnett/The-secret-garden/OEBPS/bano_9781411433120_oeb_003_r1.jpg)
“What is that?” said Mary, pointing through the
other green door.
“Another of ‘em,” shortly. “There’s another on
t’other side o’ th’ wall an’ there’s th’ orchard t’other side o’
that.”
“Can I go in them?” asked Mary.
“If tha’ likes. But there’s nowt to see.”
Mary made no response. She went down the path and
through the second green door. There she found more walls and
winter vegetables and glass frames, but in the second wall there
was another green door and it was not open. Perhaps it led into the
garden which no one had seen for ten years. As she was not at all a
timid child and always did what she wanted to do, Mary went to the
green door and turned the handle. She hoped the door would not open
because she wanted to be sure she had found the mysterious
garden—but it did open quite easily and she walked through it and
found herself in an orchard. There were walls all round it also and
trees trained against them, and there were bare fruit-trees growing
in the winter-browned grass—but there was no green door to be seen
anywhere. Mary looked for it, and yet when she had entered the
upper end of the garden she had noticed that the wall did not seem
to end with the orchard but to extend beyond it as if it enclosed a
place at the other side. She could see the tops of trees above the
wall, and when she stood still she saw a bird with a bright red
breast sitting on the topmost branch of one of them, and suddenly
he burst into his winter song—almost as if he had caught sight of
her and was calling to her.
She stopped and listened to him and somehow his
cheerful, friendly little whistle gave her a pleased feeling—even a
disagreeable little girl may be lonely, and the big closed house
and big bare moor and big bare gardens had made this one feel as if
there was no one left in the world but herself. If she had been an
affectionate child, who had been used to being loved, she would
have broken her heart, but even though she was “Mistress Mary Quite
Contrary” she was desolate, and the bright-breasted little bird
brought a look into her sour little face which was almost a smile.
She listened to him until he flew away. He was not like an Indian
bird and she liked him and wondered if she should ever see him
again. Perhaps he lived in the mysterious garden and knew all about
it.
Perhaps it was because she had nothing whatever to
do that she thought so much of the deserted garden. She was curious
about it and wanted to see what it was like. Why had Mr. Archibald
Craven buried the key? If he had liked his wife so much why did he
hate her garden? She wondered if she should ever see him, but she
knew that if she did she should not like him, and he would not like
her, and that she should only stand and stare at him and say
nothing, though she should be wanting dreadfully to ask him why he
had done such a queer thing.
“People never like me and I never like people,” she
thought. “And I never can talk as the Crawford children could. They
were always talking and laughing and making noises.”
She thought of the robin and of the way he seemed
to sing his song at her, and as she remembered the tree-top he
perched on she stopped rather suddenly on the path.
“I believe that tree was in the secret garden—I
feel sure it was,” she said. “There was a wall round the place and
there was no door.”
She walked back into the first kitchen-garden she
had entered and found the old man digging there. She went and stood
beside him and watched him a few moments in her cold little way. He
took no notice of her and so at last she spoke to him.
“I have been into the other gardens,” she
said.
“There was nothin’ to prevent thee,” he answered
crustily.
“I went into the orchard.”
“There was no dog at th’ door to bite thee,” he
answered.
“There was no door there into the other garden,”
said Mary.
“What garden?” he said in a rough voice, stopping
his digging for a moment.
“The one on the other side of the wall,” answered
Mistress Mary. “There are trees there—I saw the tops of them. A
bird with a red breast was sitting on one of them and he
sang.”
To her surprise the surly old weather-beaten face
actually changed its expression. A slow smile spread over it and
the gardener looked quite different. It made her think that it was
curious how much nicer a person looked when he smiled. She had not
thought of it before.
He turned about to the orchard side of his garden
and began to whistle—a low soft whistle. She could not understand
how such a surly man could make such a coaxing sound.
Almost the next moment a wonderful thing happened.
She heard a soft little rushing flight through the air—and it was
the bird with the red breast flying to them, and he actually
alighted on the big clod of earth quite near to the gardener’s
foot.
“Here he is,” chuckled the old man, and then he
spoke to the bird as if he were speaking to a child.
“Where has tha’ been, tha’ cheeky little beggar?”
he said. “I’ve not seen thee before today. Has tha’ begun tha’
courtin’ this early in th’ season? Tha’rt too forrad.”
The bird put his tiny head on one side and looked
up at him with his soft bright eye which was like a black dewdrop.
He seemed quite familiar and not the least afraid. He hopped about
and pecked the earth briskly, looking for seeds and insects. It
actually gave Mary a queer feeling in her heart, because he was so
pretty and cheerful and seemed so like a person. He had a tiny
plump body and a delicate beak, and slender delicate legs.
“Will he always come when you call him?” she asked
almost in a whisper.
“Aye, that he will. I’ve knowed him ever since he
was a fledgling. He come out of th’ nest in th’ other garden an’
when first he flew over th’ wall he was too weak to fly back for a
few days an’ we got friendly. When he went over th’ wall again th’
rest of th’ brood was gone an’ he was lonely an’ he come back to
me.”
“What kind of a bird is he?” Mary asked.
“Doesn’t tha’ know? He’s a robin redbreast an’
they’re th’ friendliest, curiousest birds alive. They’re almost as
friendly as dogs—if you know how to get on with ’em. Watch him
peckin’ about there an’ lookin’ round at us now an’ again. He knows
we’re talkin’ about him. ”
It was the queerest thing in the world to see the
old fellow. He looked at the plump little scarlet-waistcoated bird
as if he were both proud and fond of him.
“He’s a conceited one,” he chuckled. “He likes to
hear folk talk about him. An’ curious—bless me, there never was his
like for curiosity an’ meddlin’. He’s always comin’ to see what I’m
plantin’. He knows all th’ things Mester Craven never troubles
hissel’ to find out. He’s th’ head gardener, he is.”
The robin hopped about busily pecking the soil and
now and then stopped and looked at them a little. Mary thought his
black dewdrop eyes gazed at her with great curiosity. It really
seemed as if he were finding out all about her. The queer feeling
in her heart increased.
“Where did the rest of the brood fly to?” she
asked.
“There’s no knowin’. The old ones turn ’em out o’
their nest an’ make em fly an’ they’re scattered before you know
it. This one was a knowin’ one an’ he knew he was lonely.”
Mistress Mary went a step nearer to the robin and
looked at him very hard.
“I’m lonely,” she said.
She had not known before that this was one of the
things which made her feel sour and cross. She seemed to find it
out when the robin looked at her and she looked at the robin.
The old gardener pushed his cap back on his bald
head and stared at her a minute.
“Art tha’ th’ little wench from India?” he
asked.
Mary nodded.
“Then no wonder tha‘rt lonely. Tha’lt be lonlier
before tha’s done,” he said.
He began to dig again, driving his spade deep into
the rich black garden soil while the robin hopped about very busily
employed.
“What is your name?” Mary inquired.
He stood up to answer her.
“Ben Weatherstaff,” he answered, and then he added
with a surly chuckle, “I’m lonely mysel’ except when he’s with me,”
and he jerked his thumb toward the robin. “He’s’ th’ only friend
I’ve got.”
“I have no friends at all,” said Mary. “I never
had. My Ayah didn’t like me and I never played with any one.”
It is a Yorkshire habit to say what you think with
blunt frankness, and old Ben Weatherstaff was a Yorkshire moor
man.
“Tha’ an’ me are a good bit alike,” he said. “We
was wove out of th’ same cloth. We’re neither of us good lookin’
an’ we’re both of us as sour as we look. We’ve got the same nasty
tempers, both of us, I’ll warrant.”
This was plain speaking, and Mary Lennox had never
heard the truth about herself in her life. Native servants always
salaamed and submitted to you, whatever you did. She had never
thought much about her looks, but she wondered if she was as
unattractive as Ben Weatherstaff and she also wondered if she
looked as sour as he had looked before the robin came. She actually
began to wonder also if she was “nasty tempered.” She felt
uncomfortable.
Suddenly a clear rippling little sound broke out
near her and she turned round. She was standing. a few feet from a
young apple-tree and the robin had flown on to one of its branches
and had burst out into a scrap of a song. Ben Weatherstaff laughed
outright.
“What did he do that for?” asked Mary
“He’s made up his mind to make friends with thee,”
replied Ben. “Dang me if he hasn’t took a fancy to thee.”
“To me?” said Mary, and she moved toward the little
tree softly and looked up.
“Would you make friends with me?” she said to the
robin, just as if she was speaking to a person. “Would you?” And
she did not say it either in her hard little voice or in her
imperious Indian voice, but in a tone so soft and eager and coaxing
that Ben Weatherstaff was as surprised as she had been when she
heard him whistle.
“Why,” he cried out, “tha’ said that as nice an’
human as if tha’ was a real child instead of a sharp old woman.
Tha’ said it almost like Dickon talks to his wild things on the
moor.”
“Do you know Dickon?” Mary asked, turning round
rather in a hurry.
“Everybody knows him. Dickon’s wanderin’ about
everywhere. Th’ very blackberries an’ heather-bells knows him. I
warrant th’ foxes shows him where their cubs lies an’ th’ skylarks
doesn’t hide their nests from him.”
Mary would have liked to ask some more questions.
She was almost as curious about Dickon as she was about the
deserted garden. But just that moment the robin, who had ended his
song, gave a little shake of his wings, spread them and flew away.
He had made his visit and had other things to do.
“He has flown over the wall!” Mary cried out,
watching him. “He has flown into the orchard—he has flown across
the other wall—into the garden where there is no door!”
“He lives there,” said old Ben. “He came out o’ th’
egg there. If he’s courtin’, he’s makin’ up to some young madam of
a robin that lives among th’ old rose-trees there.”
“Rose-trees,” said Mary “Are there
rose-trees?”
Ben Weatherstaff took up his spade again and began
to dig.
“There was ten year’ ago,” he mumbled.
“I should like to see them,” said Mary. “Where is
the green door? There must be a door somewhere.”
Ben drove his spade deep and looked as
uncompanionable as he had looked when she first saw him.
“There was ten year’ ago, but there isn’t now,” he
said.
“No door!” cried Mary. “There must be.”
“None as any one can find, an’ none as is any one’s
business. Don’t you be a meddlesome wench an’ poke your nose where
it’s no cause to go. Here, I must go on with my work. Get you gone
an’ play you. I’ve no more time.”
And he actually stopped digging, threw his spade
over his shoulder and walked off, without even glancing at her or
saying good-by.