She had seen all the wild doings of
the privateering and free-trading days, and recalled as a comparatively
recent event the raiding of the Island by the men of Herm, though that
happened forty years before.
She was for the most part a very reserved and silent old lady, but her
tongue could bite like a whip when the need arose.
She occupied her own dower-rooms in the house, and rarely went outside
them. All day long she sat in her great arm-chair by the window in her
sitting-room, with the door wide open, so that she could see all that
went on in the house and outside it; and in the sombre depths of her
great black silk sun-bonnet--long since turned by age and weather to
dusky green--her watchful eyes had in them something of the inscrutable
and menacing.
Her wants were very few, and as her income from her one-third of the
farm had far exceeded her expenses for more than twenty years, she was
reputed as rich in material matters as she undoubtedly was in
common-sense and worldly wisdom. Even young Tom was sulkily silent
before her on the rare occasions when they came into contact.
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