"And he knows his missis's eyes can't be upon him just now," added the nurse, taking another draught. "He don't hardly look strong enough to do all this here big garden."
"You couldn't offend Hopley worse than by telling him that. His mistress says nothing about it now, it puts him up so. Last May, when he was laid up in bed with the rheumatis, she ordered a gardener in for two or three days to clear up some of the rough work. Hopley was not at all grateful: he only grumbled at it when he got about again."
"It's just like them good old-fashioned servants that takes pride in their work," said the nurse. "There's not many of the young uns like 'em. The less work they have to do the better it pleases _them_. Is that a hump now, or only a stoop of the shoulders?" continued she, ignoring good manners in her sociability.
"It used to be only a stoop, Mrs. Chaffen. But those things, you know, always get worse with years."
Mrs. Chaffen nodded. "And gardening work, when one has a natural stoop, is the worst sort of work a man can take to."
"True," assented Ann. She had spoken absently all along, and kept glancing round and listening as though ill at ease. One might have fancied she feared a ghost was coming down the staircase.
"What be you a-harkening at?" asked Mrs. Chaffen.
"The baby's in a sweet sleep, he is. I wonder whether he'll get reared, that baby?--he's very little. Where's the gentleman?" abruptly inquired Mrs. Chaffen, after a pause.
"Mrs. Grey's husband. Him we saw here last night."
If Ann Hopley had been apathetic before, she was fully aroused to interest now, and turned her eyes upon the nurse with a long stare.
"Why what is it that you are talking of?" she asked. "There has been no gentleman here. Mrs. Grey's husband is abroad."
"But I saw him," persisted the nurse. "He stood right at the head of the staircase when me and Dr. Moore was a-going up it. I saw him."
Then they went on, asserting and re-asserting. Nurse Chaffen protesting, by all that was truthful, that she did see the gentleman: Ann Hopley denying in the most emphatic language that any gentleman had been there, or could have been. Poor woman! in her faithful zeal for her master's safety; in her terrible inward fear lest this might bring danger upon him, she went so far as to vow by heaven that no living soul had been in the house or about it, save her mistress and the infant, herself and Hopley.