"I was thinking of taking it up next week," I said lamely. "I just hadn't actually got round to it yet."
She threw her head back and laughed toothily, like a film star. "I like you, Flavia de Luce," she said. "But I have the advantage, don't I? You've told me your name, but I haven't told you mine."
"It's Nialla," I said. "Mr. Porson called you Nialla."
She stuck out her hand, her face grave. "That's right," she said, "he did. But you can call me Mother Goose."
* TWO *
MOTHER GOOSE!
I have never much cared for flippant remarks, especially when others make them, and in particular, I don't give a frog's fundament for them when they come from an adult. It has been my experience that facetiousness in the mouth of someone old enough to know better is often no more than camouflage for something far, far worse.
And yet, in spite of that, I found myself swallowing the sharp--and deliciously nasty!--retort that was already on the tip of my tongue, and instead, managed a diluted smile.
"Mother Goose?" I repeated, dubiously.
She burst into tears again, and I was glad that I had held my tongue. I was about to be instantly rewarded by hearing something juicy.
Besides, I had already begun to detect a slight but invisible attraction between this woman and myself. Could it be pity? Or was it fear? I couldn't say: I knew only that some deep-seated chemical substance inside one of us was crying out to its long-lost complement--or was it its antidote?--in the other.
I put a hand gently on her shoulder and held out my handkerchief. She looked at it skeptically.
"It's all right," I said. "They're only grass stains."
That set her off into a remarkable contortion. She buried her face in the handkerchief, and her shoulders quaked so violently I thought for a moment she was going to fly to pieces. To allow her time to recover--and because I was rather embarrassed by her outburst--I wandered off a little distance to examine the inscription on a tall, weathered gravestone that marked the grave of one Lydia Green, who had "dyed" in 1638 at the age of "one hundred and thirty-five yeeres."