“I’m sorry I can’t bid yer take a cheer,” said Mrs. Jellison to him, “but what yer han’t got yer can’t give, so I don’t trouble my head about nothink.”

Wharton applauded her with easy politeness, and then gave himself, with folded arms, to examining the cottage while Marcella talked.  It might be ten feet broad, he thought, by six feet in one part and eight feet in another.  The roof was within little more than an inch of his head.  The stairway in the corner was falling to pieces; he wondered how the woman got up safely to her bed at night; custom, he supposed, can make even old bones agile.

Meanwhile Marcella was unfolding the project of the straw-plaiting workshop that she and Lady Winterbourne were about to start.  Mrs. Jellison put on her spectacles apparently that she might hear the better, pushed away her dinner in spite of her visitors’ civilities, and listened with a bright and beady eye.

“An’ yer agoin’ to pay me one a sixpence a score, where I now gets ninepence.  And I’ll not have to tramp it into town no more—­you’ll send a man round.  And who is agoin’ to pay me, miss, if you’ll excuse me asking?”

“Lady Winterbourne and I,” said Marcella, smiling.  “We’re going to employ this village and two others, and make as good business of it as we can.  But we’re going to begin by giving the workers better wages, and in time we hope to teach them the higher kinds of work.”

“Lor’!” said Mrs. Jellison.  “But I’m not one o’ them as kin do with changes.”  She took up her plait and looked at it thoughtfully.  “Eighteen-pence a score.  It wor that rate when I wor a girl.  An’ it ha’ been dibble—­dibble—­iver sense; a penny off here, an’ a penny off there, an’ a hard job to keep a bite ov anythink in your mouth.”

“Then I may put down your name among our workers, Mrs. Jellison?” said Marcella, rising and smiling down upon her.

“Oh, lor’, no; I niver said that,” said Mrs. Jellison, hastily.  “I don’t hold wi’ shilly-shallyin’ wi’ yer means o’ livin’.  I’ve took my plait to Jimmy Gedge—­’im an’ ’is son, fust shop on yer right hand when yer git into town—­twenty-five year, summer and winter—­me an’ three other women, as give me a penny a journey for takin’ theirs.  If I wor to go messin’ about wi’ Jimmy Gedge, Lor’ bless yer, I should ’ear ov it—­oh!  I shoulden sleep o’ nights for thinkin’ o’ how Jimmy ud serve me out when I wor least egspectin’ ov it.  He’s a queer un.  No, miss, thank yer kindly; but I think I’ll bide.”

Marcella, amazed, began to argue a little, to expound the many attractions of the new scheme.  Greatly to her annoyance, Wharton came forward to her help, guaranteeing the solvency and permanence of her new partnership in glib and pleasant phrase, wherein her angry fancy suspected at once the note of irony.  But Mrs. Jellison held firm, embroidering her negative, indeed, with her usual cheerful chatter, but sticking to it all the same.  At last there was no way of saving dignity but to talk of something else and go—­above all, to talk of something else before going, lest the would-be benefactor should be thought a petty tyrant.