I do not recall many of her words. His ingratitude to her was Bettesworth's chief offence--after all she had done for him! So she told what she had done: how she had cooked his supper night after night, and got it all ready while he sat down there at the public-house waiting to be fetched. She wouldn't have done it, but Kid said, "Poor old feller, help 'n all you can. He en't got nobody to do anything for him." And she had washed his clothes, and scrubbed out his house; and he was such a dirty old man that it almost made her sick. And when he was ill, Mrs. Cook watching (downstairs, I gathered) was obliged to sit all night with the window open, because the place so stank. I heard how many pails of water it took to scrub the floor; how the boards upstairs--new boards "as white as drippen snow" when the Bettesworths took possession--would in all likelihood never come white again; and how the landlord had said that he should demand a week's rent (from me, of course) to pay for cleaning, when Bettesworth moved. And now Bettesworth was gone away, "taking his money" (his wages or his allowance), and "I don't like it, Mr. Bourne!" said old Nanny, vehemently. Not, apparently, that the money was an object to her, but that all her good offices had gone unthanked, nay, minimized. Had not Bettesworth complained that he had no one to do anything for him? And all the time Mrs. Norris was slaving for him. Had he not told me during his illness that he had taken nothing, when, in fact, Mrs. Cook not long before had taken him up a cup of tea and two slices of bread and butter, which he had eaten? "I don't _like_ it, Mr. Bourne." No, I could see that she did not; I could hear as much in the emphasis of the words, rapped out like swift hammer-strokes; and the old woman looked almost handsome in the flush of her indignation.
I left her and passed on, wondering what the original offence could have been to produce such bitterness. Probably it was some harsh speech of Bettesworth's, some antique savagery drawn from him in the despair of his lonely situation, with his powers failing, the workhouse looming. Suspicious, hard, obstinate, wrapped-up now wholly in himself, he may easily ... but it is useless to surmise.
