“Oh,” said Mrs. Simpson, moving her calm gaze from the distant fields, where it had strayed, “well, my great-grandmother lived to be ninety-six, and _she_ never touched greens.”
Andy frowned. That was the way things happened in real life—so different from a well-ordered parish—no method anywhere.
“I’m glad you’ve made friends with Mrs. Jebb,” he said, begging the question until he thought of a good reply. “It’s rather lonely for her, and I shall be grateful if you would look her up sometimes—without your furniture polish,” he added, with a laugh.
“You know Miss Elizabeth bid for the sideboard to give me as well?” said Mrs. Simpson.
“Yes,” said Andy eagerly, so delighted to speak of Elizabeth that he quite forgot to address any further admonition on the subject of ‘greens.’ “Yes, it was a queer thing we should both think of the same thing, wasn’t it?”
How lovely the ‘we’ sounded! Andy thrilled to the exquisite, fresh music of it.
But Mrs. Simpson stroked Sally’s hair and said calmly—
“I don’t know that there was anything so strange about it. All my life I’ve had things happen like that. When I was a little girl like Sally here I lost my best gloves—new ones they were—and I went up into the china-cupboard by myself and prayed hard to find them, and I did find them under my bed—a place nobody would think of finding new gloves in, would they?”
“And it was the same thing,” continued Mrs. Simpson, “with the cupboard. I prayed hard about that sideboard, and I said if anything could cheer me up a bit, it would, and I got it. I expect Them that overlooks all thought I had had as much as I could stand.” She paused, then added, just in the same tone, “Sally, if that boy swallows that carrot he’ll choke himself.”
Sally’s responsible little face sharpened, and she ran out to rescue her charge from an untimely end.
“Naughty boy,” she said, taking the carrot from his fat hand to substitute her own ripe gooseberry, and she did it without any ill-feeling; he was behaving, of course, as well as you could expect boys to behave.
But as Andy tramped off with his empty basket, an almost incredible idea crossed his mind. Could Mrs. Simpson have reached a place beyond him?
Ridiculous! Her idea of the Deity as a sort of Lost Property Office was an altogether wrong and hideously material one.