Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/28

“Sam !” cried she.

Turning with a start, his face lighted up. He called to him a little boy to hold the horse, alighted, and came and stood under her window.

“I can’t come down easily, Sam, or E would!” she said. ‘Did you know I lived here ?”

“Well, Mrs. Twycott, I knew you lived along here somewhere. I have often looked out for ’ee,”

He briefly explained his own presence on the scene. He had long since given up his gardening in the village near Aldbrickham, and was now manager at a market-gardener’s on the south side of London, it being part of his duty to go np to Covent Garden with wagon-loads of produce two or three times a week, In answer to her curious inquiry, he admitted that he had come to this particular district because be had seen in the Aldbrickham paper a year or two before the announcement of the death in South London of the aforetime vicar of Gaymead, which had revived an interest in her dwelling-place that he could not extinguish, leading him to hover about the locality till his present post had been secured.

They spoke of their native village in dear old North Wessex, the spots in which they had played together aa children. She tried to feel that she was a dignified personage now, that she must not be teo confidential with Sam. But she could not keep it up, and the teare hanging in her eyes, were indicated in her voice.

“You are not happy, Mrs. Twycott, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Oh, of course not! I lost my husband only the year before last.”

“Ah! I meant in another way. You'd like to be home again ?”

“This is my home—for life. The house belongs to me, But I anderstand”— She let it out then.