Liza's face began to brighten at some amusing memories.

"Do you mind Reuben Thwaite's merry night last winter at Aboon Beck?"

"I wasn't there, Liza," said Rotha.

"Robbie was actin' like a play-actor, just the same as he'd seen at Carlisle. He was a captain, and he murdered a king, and then he was made king himself, and the ghost came and sat in his chair at a great feast he gave. Lord o' me! but it was queer. First he came on when he was going to do the murder and let wit he saw a dagger floating before him. He started and jumped same as our big tom cat when Mouser comes round about him. You'd have died of laughing. Then he comes on for the bank'et, and stamps his foot and tells the ghost to be off; and then he trembles and dodders from head to foot like Mouser when he's had his wash on Sat.u.r.day nights. You'd have dropt, it was so queer."

Liza's enjoyment of the tragedy had not been exhausted with the occasion, for now she laughed at the humors of her own narrative.

"But those days are gone," she continued. "I met Robbie last night, and I says, says I, 'Have you p.a.w.ned your dancing shoes, Robbie, as you're so glum?' And that's what he is, save when he's tipsy, and then what do ye think the maizelt creature does?"

"What?" said Rotha.

"Why," answered Liza, with a big tear near to toppling over the corner of her eye, "why, the crack't 'un goes and gathers up all the maimed dogs in Wythburn; 'Becca Rudd's 'Dash,' and that's lame on a hind leg, and Nancy Grey's 'Meg,' and you know she's blind of one eye, and Grace M'Nippen's 'King d.i.c.k,' and he's been broken back't this many a long year, and they all up and follow Robbie when he's nigh almost drunk, and then he's right--away he goes with his cap a' one side, and all the folks laughin'--the big poddish-head!"

There was a great sob for Liza in the heart of the humor of that situation; and trying no longer to conceal her sorrow at her lover's relapse into drinking habits, she laid her head on Rotha's breast and wept outright.

"We must go to Mrs. Ray; she'll be lonely, poor old thing," said Rotha, drying Liza's eyes; "besides, she hasn't had her supper, you know."

The girls left the dairy, where the churning had made small progress as yet, and went through the kitchen towards the room where the Dame of Shoulthwaite lay in that long silence which had begun sooner with her than with others.

As they pa.s.sed towards the invalid's room, Mrs. Garth came in at the porch. It was that lady's first visit for years, and her advent on this occasion seemed to the girls to forebode some ill. But her manner had undergone an extraordinary transformation. Her spiteful tone was gone, and the look of sourness, which had often suggested to Liza her affinity to the plums that grew in her own garden, had given place to what seemed to be a look of extreme benevolence.

"It's slashy and cold, but I've come to see my old neighbor," she said. "I'm sure I've suffered lang and sair ower her affliction, poor body."

Without much show of welcome from Rotha, the three women went into Mrs. Ray's room and sat down.

"Poor body, who wad have thought it?" said Mrs. Garth, putting her ap.r.o.n to her eye as she looked up at the vacant gaze in the eyes of the sufferer. "I care not now how soon my awn gla.s.s may run out. I've so fret myself ower this mischance that the wrinkles'll soon come."

"She needn't wait much for them if she's anxious to be off," whispered Liza to Rotha.

"Yes," continues Mrs. Garth, in her melancholy soliloquy, "I fret mysel' the lee-lang day."

"She's a deal over slape and smooth," whispered Liza again. "What's it all about? There's something in the wind, mind me."

"The good dear old creatur; and there's no knowin' now if she's provided for; there's no knowin' it, I say, is there?"

To this appeal neither of the girls showed any disposition to respond.

Mrs. Garth thereupon applied the ap.r.o.n once more to her eye, and continued: "Who wad have thought she could have been brought down so low, she as held her head so high."

"So she did, did she! Never heard on it," Liza broke in.

Not noticing the interruption, Mrs. Garth continued: "And now, who knows but she may come down lower yet--who knows but she may?"

Still failing to gain a response to her gloomy prognostications, Mrs.

Garth replied to her own inquiry.

"None on us knows, I reckon! And what a down-come it wad be for her, poor creatur!"

"She's sticking to that subject like a c.o.c.kelty burr," said Liza, not troubling this time to speak beneath her breath. "What ever does she mean by it?"

Rotha was beginning to feel concerned on the same score, so she said: "Mrs. Ray, poor soul, is not likely to come to a worse pa.s.s while she has two sons to take care of her."

"No good to her, nowther on 'em--no good, I reckon; mair's the pity,"

murmured Mrs. Garth, calling her ap.r.o.n once more into active service.

"How so?" Rotha could not resist the temptation to probe these mysterious deliverances.

"Leastways, not 'xcept the good dear man as is gone, Angus hissel', made a will for her; and, as I say to my Joey, there's no knowin' as ever he did; and nowther is there."

Rotha replied that it was not usual for a statesman to make a will.

The law was clear enough as to inheritance. There could be no question of Mrs. Ray's share of what had been left. Besides, if there were, it would not matter much in her case, where everything that was the property of her sons was hers, and everything that was hers was theirs.

Mrs. Garth p.r.i.c.ked up her ears at this. She could not conceal her interest in what Rotha had said, and throwing aside her languor, she asked, in anything but a melancholy tone, "So he's left all hugger-mugger, has he?"

"I know nothing of that," replied Rotha; "but if he has not made a will it cannot concern us at all. It's all very well for the lords of the manor and such sort of folk to make their wills, for, what with one thing and another, their property runs cross and cross, and there's scarce any knowing what way it lies; but for a statesman owning maybe a hundred or two of acres and a thousand or two of sheep, forby a house and the like, it's not needful at all. The willing is all done by the law."

"So it is, so it is, la.s.s," said Mrs. Garth. The girls thought there was a cruel and sinister light in the old woman's eyes as she spoke.

"Ey, the willin's all done by t' law; but, as I says to my Joey, 'It isn't always done to our likin', Joey'; and nowther is it."

Liza could bear no longer Mrs. Garth's insinuating manner. Coming forward with a defiant air, the little woman said: "Look you, don't you snurl so; but if you've anything to say, just open your mouth and tell us what it's about."

The challenge was decidedly unequivocal.

"'Od bliss the la.s.s!" cried Mrs. Garth with an air of profound astonishment "What ails the bit thing?"

"Look here, you've got a deal too much talk to be jannic, _you_ have,"

cried Liza, with an emphasis intended to convey a sense of profound contempt of loquaciousness in general and of Mrs. Garth's loquaciousness in particular.

Mrs. Garth's first impulse was to shame her adversary out of her warlike att.i.tude with a little biting banter. Curling her lip, she said not very relevantly to the topic in hand, "They've telt me yer a famous sweethearter, Liza."

"That's mair nor iver _you_ could have been," retorted the girl, who always dropt into the homespun of the country side in degree as she became excited.

"Yer gitten ower slape, a deal ower slippery," said Mrs. Garth. "I always told my Joey as he'd have to throw ye up, and I'm fair pleased to see he's taken me at my word."

"Oh, he has, has he?" said Liza, rising near to boiling point at the imputation of being the abandoned sweetheart of the blacksmith. "I always said as ye could bang them all at leein. I would not have your Joey if his lips were droppin' honey and his pockets droppin' gold.

Nothing would hire me to do it. Joey indeed!" added Liza, with a vision of the blacksmith's sanguine head rising before her, "why, you might light a candle at his poll."

Mrs. Garth's banter was not calculated to outlast this kind of a.s.sault. Rising to her feet, she said: "Weel, thou'rt a rare yan, I _will_ say. Yer ower fond o' red ribbons, laal thing. It's aff with her ap.r.o.n and on with her bonnet, iv'ry chance. I reckon ye'd like a silk gown, ye wad."

"Never mind my clothes," said Liza. Mrs. Garth gave her no time to say more, for, at the full pitch of indignation, she turned to Rotha, and added: "And ye're a rare pauchtie damsel. Ye might have been bred at Court, you as can't muck a byre."

"Go home to bed, old Cuddy Garth," said Liza, "and sup more poddish, and take some of the wrinkles out of your wizzent skin."

"Setting yer cap at the Rays boys," continued Mrs. Garth, "but it'll be all of no use to ye, mark my word. Old Angus never made a will, and the law'll do all the willin', ye'll see."

"Don't proddle up yon matter again, woman," said Liza.