''There''s Dainty, crying again . . .'' She rolls her eyes. ''But how I have run on!—haven''t I, Miss Lilly? Not finding me tiresome, dear? Ain''t much to hold the interest, perhaps, in these old tales ..."
''Go on,'' I say. My mouth is dry, and sticks. ''Go on, about the woman.''
''The lady, what had the little girl? Such a slight little scrap of a girl, she was: fair-haired, blue-eyed—well, they all come out blue, of course; and brown up, later . . .''◇思◇兔◇網◇
She looks, meaningfully, into my own brown eyes. I blink, and colour. But my voice I make flat. ''Go on,'' I say again. ''I know you mean to tell me. Tell me now. The woman wished her daughter dead. What then?''
''Wished her dead?'' She moves her head. ''So she said. So women do say, sometimes. And sometimes they mean it. Not her, though. That child was everything to her, and when I said she had much
better give her up to me, than keep her, she grew quite wild. "What, you don''t mean to raise her yourself?" I said. "You, a lady, without a husband?" She said she would pass herself off as a widow—meant to go abroad, where no-one knew her, and make her living as a seamstress. "I''ll see my daughter married to a poor man before she knows my shame," she said. "I''m through with the quality life." That was her one thought, poor thing, that no amount of se