But no blow did I receive — only a cackle of laughter, and a rattle of indrawn breath. ‘?G Sam's long past chasin’ the likes of ye, miss. The rheumaticks've got ‘im. Not but what ye ain't a sweet bit o’ goods, and right to keep yer wits about ye.”

“The Tibbits?” I managed, by way of reply.

The creature swung his head farther down the road. “The red ‘un, with two winders what looks out onto the street. Ye'll find it, certain sure. It've got a dead pullet nailed to the door.”

I should have hastened from him as fast as my legs could carry me, but that he shuffled nearer, and held out a withered palm, grinning repulsively through all his rotten teeth. I had just enough command of my wits to find my purse, and drop a coin at his feet. This he swiftly gathered up; and his laughter followed me the length of the narrow lane.

I thus found the Tibbits’ abode, and judged it to be occupied, from the squeals and cries of children within, which were all too frequently punctuated with slaps and the swift onset of tears. It was a poor sort of place, constructed of odd bits of timber, and with a roof in sad need of pitch, and a facade that wanted paint, and a frame too prone to precarious tilting; almost I might have thought it poised to slide into the river at its back, and should misgive the effects of another storm upon its eroding foundations. The river here was narrow enough, that the houses perched on the opposite bank were but a strong man's leap away — so that the effect of the massed housing was more evocative of London's stews, than of Lyme's cheerful cottages.[65]

To my horror, a chicken indeed adorned the Tibbits’ door — and had for some time, to judge by its decayed appearance, and the foul smell that drifted from its carcass (now, do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat). Traces of rotten vegetable matter I also discerned upon the portal's surface, and wondered at the tyranny to which the Tibbits were subjected. Was not the loss of a father, in so public and horrible a manner, tragedy enough?

Squeamish in the extreme of knocking upon such a door, I turned to a window, but found that nothing was visible through its oilcloth; and so, after an instant's hesitation, 1 was reduced to calling towards the house.

“Widow Tibbit! Pray come into the lane! I would speak with you a moment!”

A sudden silence greeted my words — a listening silence, I was certain — and then I heard the sound of chair legs pushed back from the table, and a hoarse whisper hissed: “You there, Tom, give a look through the winder and tell us?? it ‘tis. If it be that hussy Sue Watkins, you ‘eave this tater at ‘er ‘ead!”

This last intelligence caused me to feel no little dread, and from my knowledge of small boys, and their relishing of any opportunity for battle, to consider a retreat to the porch opposite. Tom's appearance at the window, however, prevented my flight.

“Taint ‘er,” he reported over his shoulder; and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Tis a lady.”

“A lady! What, wi'out a carriage?”

The sound of feet rapidly coursing towards the door, and a swift pull to its handle, that set the crucified pullet to jiggling; and I was as urgently waved inside by a woman I assumed to be the very Maggie I sought. Without a second thought, I mounted the two steps and eased past her, blinking somewhat as my eyes adjusted to the cottage's poor light.

“Maggie Tibbit, at yer servus,” the woman said, bobbing.

“Miss Austen,” I replied, and met the timorous stares of five very dirty children. One had a hand in its mouth, another hitched continually at his trousers, and the youngest took one look at my fine figure and burst into tears.

“There, there, Jackie boy,” said Maggie abruptly, as she scooped up the screaming child and unceremoniously offered it her breast, “the lady won't bite you.”

The Widow Tibbit was a blowsy-enough figure, as I had half-expected from the nature of Miss Crawford's disapproval. Her dark curls were undone about her face, and she was arrayed in a dressing gown of soiled silk, though the morning was well-advanced. There was rouge upon her cheeks, which might have benefitted from a bath, as should the rest of her person; and a dark substance trailed down her front, that I adjudged to be snuff — though what use a woman might have for such a substance, I could hardly imagine. On her feet were satin slippers that had once been red, and once very dear; and from the cloud of fumes she breathed in my general direction, I knew her to have been indulging in brandy.

The woman was a walking advertisement for the smuggler's trade; and that her larder should boast some excellent if contraband tea, though not an ounce of oats for her children's porridge, I swiftly surmised.

“Mrs. Tibbit—” I began.

“Plain Maggie? do, now Bill's been done for,” she replied, and knocked the child from her breast with a casual blow that immediately set it to wailing. “What biz-ness ‘uv ye got wit me?”

I lifted the basket of clothing from my arm, and opened its lid. “I thought your children might benefit from these few things collected by the women of St. Michael's.”

“That Crawford bitch ‘ave sent you, ain't she?” Maggie's countenance darkened and she advanced upon me pugnaciously, her protuberant lower lip revealing some very poor teeth indeed. “Reckon she's cackling summat fearsome, in all her black feathers, now old Mag's out on the street.”

Somewhat disconcerted, I took refuge in a backwards step and a folding of my gloved hands. “I received die clothing of Miss Crawford, assuredly, as she manages St. Michael's good works — but the desire to visit, and to bestow these things upon your children, was entirely mine, I promise you, Mrs. Tibbit.”

The widow pawed through the clothing, scattering chemises and shirts with a careless disregard for the dirtiness of her floor; but in considering the grime that covered her children's bodies, I recollected that the linen should not long survive in a pristine state, and forbore to vent my outrage. The scattered goods disappeared amidst a tangle of youthful limbs, like meat torn asunder by starving wolves. “‘ere!” cried the eldest, whom I recollected to be Tom. “You've never brought us shoes!” His expression of disgust might as readily have greeted the rotten pullet nailed to his front door, and in truth, the worn leather boot he held aloft bore an ill-begotten air. But Tom need not have worried — the shoe was snatched from his fingers by a fellow urchin of indeterminate sex, arrayed in what appeared to be a fisherman's overall many sizes too large; and borne from the house with a triumphant cackle. Tom dashed into the street in pursuit, a fearsome oath emanating from his childish lips. Their mother reached for a bottle resting on the worn oak settle and took a long draught. To my relief, she did not think to offer me a similar hospitality.

“The things'll do,” she declared, and thrust the empty basket aside. “What I wants to know, miss, is why you come — when us's strangers to each other.”

“Who could be unmoved by so much misfortune, as you have lately endured, Mrs. Tibbit?”

“Oh, most o’ Lyme — and that's a fact,” she rejoined sardonically. She spared a moment to place little Jack upon the floor, and shoo the remaining two urchins towards their fellows in the street. Then she turned to me with a calculating air.

“But my troubles is none o’ yer concern, miss. What you want o’ me?”

Any further attempt at explanation on my part was immediately forestalled by the street door's being once more thrust open, to reveal a massive fellow with a belligerent face leering upon the stoop. “Eh, Mag,” he said, by way of salutation. “I've brought you summat nice.”

“Not now, Joe. I've company.”

“Company?” The fellow spat out the word like a wounded animal, and slid into the room without need of further invitation. The newcomer was burly and forceful, a fisherman from the look of his callused hands and the odour that pervaded his person, and he was clearly all but overcome with the anger engendered by his fears. It required all my fortitude not to flee through the open door, so menacing was his aspect; and yet, some sensibility that Maggie Tibbit should not be left alone with such a man, urged me to stand my ground.