“Well,” said Mrs. Medlock.  “What do you think of it?”

“Nothing,” she answered.  “I know nothing about such places.”

That made Mrs. Medlock laugh a short sort of laugh.

“Eh!” she said, “but you are like an old woman.  Don’t you care?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mary, “whether I care or not.”

“You are right enough there,” said Mrs. Medlock.  “It doesn’t.  What you’re to be kept at Misselthwaite Manor for I don’t know, unless because it’s the easiest way. He’s not going to trouble himself about you, that’s sure and certain.  He never troubles himself about no one.”

She stopped herself as if she had just remembered something in time.

“He’s got a crooked back,” she said.  “That set him wrong.  He was a sour young man and got no good of all his money and big place till he was married.”

Mary’s eyes turned toward her in spite of her intention not to seem to care.  She had never thought of the hunchback’s being married and she was a trifle surprised.  Mrs. Medlock saw this, and as she was a talkative woman she continued with more interest.  This was one way of passing some of the time, at any rate.

“She was a sweet, pretty thing and he’d have walked the world over to get her a blade o’ grass she wanted.  Nobody thought she’d marry him, but she did, and people said she married him for his money.  But she didn’t—­she didn’t,” positively.  “When she died—­”

Mary gave a little involuntary jump.

“Oh! did she die!” she exclaimed, quite without meaning to.  She had just remembered a French fairy story she had once read called “Riquet a la Houppe.”  It had been about a poor hunchback and a beautiful princess and it had made her suddenly sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven.

“Yes, she died,” Mrs. Medlock answered.  “And it made him queerer than ever.  He cares about nobody.  He won’t see people.  Most of the time he goes away, and when he is at Misselthwaite he shuts himself up in the West Wing and won’t let any one but Pitcher see him.  Pitcher’s an old fellow, but he took care of him when he was a child and he knows his ways.”

It sounded like something in a book and it did not make Mary feel cheerful.  A house with a hundred rooms, nearly all shut up and with their doors locked—­a house on the edge of a moor—­whatsoever a moor was—­sounded dreary.  A man with a crooked back who shut himself up also!  She stared out of the window with her lips pinched together, and it seemed quite natural that the rain should have begun to pour down in gray slanting lines and splash and stream down the window-panes.  If the pretty wife had been alive she might have made things cheerful by being something like her own mother and by running in and out and going to parties as she had done in frocks “full of lace.”  But she was not there any more.

“You needn’t expect to see him, because ten to one you won’t,” said Mrs. Medlock.  “And you mustn’t expect that there will be people to talk to you.  You’ll have to play about and look after yourself.  You’ll be told what rooms you can go into and what rooms you’re to keep out of.  There’s gardens enough.  But when you’re in the house don’t go wandering and poking about.  Mr. Craven won’t have it.”