"Ay, well, I can't settle it one way or t'other," Sarah said stubbornly, turning a deaf ear. "Things is a bit ham-sam just now," she added evasively, fiddling with her cup, and wondering why she could not bring herself to announce that they were leaving the farm. But as long as they did not speak of it, it was just as if nothing had happened, as though the words which had framed the decision had never been said. And yet at that very moment Simon was probably telling Will and Mr. Dent, and the news would be racing its way round Witham until it came to Eliza's ear....

"We'll work it some way," May urged, not knowing of the big pause that had come into Sarah's life. "You may have to get a word put in for you, but that's easy done. I'll see the Squire and Mrs. Wilson and maybe a few more, and it'll be all fixed up without you putting yourself about."

"You're right kind, you are that."

"It's worth it," May said again.

"Ay ... I don't know..." Sarah answered her absently, and then sat up straight. "It'd ha' been worth it once," she broke out suddenly, as if letting herself go. "There was a time when I'd a deal sooner ha' been dead than blind, but it don't matter much now. There's not that much left as I care to look at, I'm sure. It's the eyes make the heart sore more nor half the time. But I'd ha' felt badly about it if Geordie was coming back, and I couldn't ha' framed to see his face."

May said--"It's best not to think of such things," as cheerfully as she could, but her own face clouded as she spoke, and suddenly she looked old. Here was the old trouble, if the doctor had known, that was still big enough to make the new one seem almost small. Blindness was not so dreadful a thing to these two women, who had both of them lost the light of their eyes so long before. Long ago they had known what it was to rise and see no shine in the day, no blue in the sea for May who had lost her lover, no sun in the sky for Sarah without her child.

It was twenty years now since Geordie had gone away, clearing out over-seas as casually as if into the next field. Eliza's eldest from Blindbeck had gone as well, as like him in face and voice as if hatched in the same nest. They were too lively, too restless for the calm machinery of English country life, and when the call came from over the ocean they had vanished in a night. Canada, which has so many links with Westmorland now, seemed farther away then than the world beyond the grave. Death at least left you with bones in a green yard and a stone with a graven name, but Canada made you childless, and there was no sign of your grief beneath the church's wall. Geordie had written, indeed, from time to time, but though the letters were light enough on the top, there was heartache underneath. He was a failure there, they gathered, after a while, just as they were failures here; as if the curse of the Sandholes luck had followed even across the sea, Jim was a failure, too, as far as they knew, though their impression of Jim's doings was always vague. His very name on the page seemed to have the trick of dissolving itself in invisible ink, and his own letters were never answered and barely even read. He had been fond of his aunt, but Sarah had given him only the scantiest tolerance in return. Sarah, indeed, would not have cared if Jim had been burning in everlasting fire....

"We'd a letter from Geordie a month back," she said suddenly, after the pause, "begging the loan of a pound o' two to fetch him home."

May started a little, and the colour came back to her cheek. It was a long time now since anything fresh about Geordie had come her way. Once she had been in the habit of going to Sandholes for news, asking for it by indirect methods of which she was still rather ashamed. Sarah had been jealous of her in those days and grudged her every word; and since she had stopped being jealous there had been next to nothing to grudge.....

"Ay, he axed for his fare, but we hadn't got it to send. I don't know as we want him, neither, if he can't shape better than that."

May felt her heart shake as she leaned forward, clasping her hands.

"I've a bit put by I could spare," she began, with a thrill in her voice. "It could go from you, Mrs. Thornthet,--he need never know.

You've only to say the word, and you can have it when you want."

A twinge of the ancient jealousy caught suddenly at Sarah's heart. With difficulty she remembered May's kindness and the long bond of the years.

"I'll not spend any la.s.s's savings on my lad!" she answered roughly, and then softened again. "Nay, May, my girl, you mean well enough, but it wain't do. Losh save us! Hasn't he done badly enough by you, as it is?" she added grimly. "You should ha' been wed this many a long year, instead o' hanging on for the likes o' him!"

"I doubt I'd never have married in any case," May said. "I don't know as I'd ever have made up my mind to leave my dad."

"You'd ha' wed right enough but for Geordie,--dad or no dad!" Sarah scoffed. "You're the sort as is meant to be wed, from the start. Nay, he's spoilt your life, and no doubt about it, but there's no sense in lossing the can because you've gone and spilt the milk. Say you sent him the bra.s.s, and he come back without a cent, what'd be the end o' the business then? You'd wed him, I'll be bound,--for pity, if for nowt else. Your father'll likely leave you a nice bit, and you'd get along on that, but who's to say how Geordie'd frame after all these years?

Happen he's lost the habit o' work by now, and it'll be a deal more likely than not if he's taken to drink."

"Geordie wasn't that sort." May shook her head. "He'll not have taken to drink, not he!"

"Folks change out of all knowledge,--ay, and inside as well as out."

"Not if they're made right," May said stubbornly, "and Geordie was all right. He was a daft mafflin, I'll give you that, always playing jokes and the like, but it was just the life in him,--nowt else. He was a fine lad then, in spite of it all, and I don't mind swearing that he's a fine man now."

"Ay," Sarah said slowly, "fine enough, to be sure! A fine lad to leave his folks for t'far side o' the world wi' never a word! A fine man as can't look to himself at forty, let alone give his father and mother a bit o' help! ... Nay, my la.s.s, don't you talk to me!" she finished brusquely. "We've thought a deal o' Geordie, me and Simon and you, but I reckon he's nowt to crack on, all the same!"

"You'd think different when he was back," May pleaded,--"I'm sure you would. And you needn't fret about me if that's all there is in the road. I made up my mind long since as I shouldn't wed. But I'd be rarely glad, all the same, to have had a hand in fetching him home."

"You're real good, as I said, but it's over late." She paused a moment and then went on again. "Letter went a couple o' week ago."

The tears came into May's eyes.

"You don't mean as you said him no? Eh, Mrs. Thornthet, but I'm sorry to hear that!"

"Yon sort o' thing's best answered right off."

For a moment or two May put her hand to her face. "Eh, but what a pity!" she murmured, after a while. "What does it matter whose bra.s.s fetches him home?"

"It matters to me."

"It matters a deal more that you're breaking your heart----"

"Nay, then, I'm not! ... Ay, well, then, what if I be?"

"Let me get the bra.s.s right off!" May said, in a coaxing tone. "Let me,--do now! Send it to him to-day."

"Nay."

"You've got it into your head he's different, but I'll swear you're wrong! Different in looks, maybe, but he'll be none the worse for that.

He always framed to be a fine figure of a man when he was set. You'd be as throng wi' him as a clockie hen wi' a pot egg."

Sarah snorted scorn, but her face softened a little.

"He's forty, but I'll be bound he hasn't changed. I'll be bound he's n.o.bbut the same merry lad inside."

"Happen none the better for that."

"Geordie isn't the sort as grows old--Geordie an' Jim----"

"Nay, then, I want nowt about Jim!" Sarah flared, and the other laughed.

"It's hard to think of 'em apart even now,--they were that like. Why, I've mixed 'em myself, over and over again, and fine fun it was for them, to be sure!"

"_I_ never mixed 'em!" Sarah snapped, with a blind glare. "I never see a sc.r.a.p o' likeness myself."

"Why, the whole countryside couldn't tell 'em apart,--school-folk an'

all! 'Twasn't only their faces was like; 'twas their voices, too."

"Hold your whisht!"

"You'll remember yon calls they had, Geordie an' Jim----"

"Whisht, I tell ye!" There was something scared as well as angry in Sarah's tone, and May was hushed into silence in spite of herself. "Jim was sweet on you, too," the old woman went on surlily, after a pause.

"If there wasn't that much to choose between 'em, why didn't you choose him?"

"There was all the world to choose between them, when it come to it,"

May said smiling, but with tears in her voice. "Once Geordie'd kissed me, I never mixed 'em up again!"

The rough colour came suddenly into Sarah's face. She tried to turn it away, with the pathetic helplessness of the blind who cannot tell what others may be reading there in spite of their will. May, however, was looking away from her into the past.

"Not but what Jim was a rare good sort," she was saying, with the tenderness of a woman towards a lover who once might have been and just was not. "Eh, and how fond he was of you, Mrs. Thornthet!" she added, turning again. "No lad could ha' thought more of his own mother than he did of you."

"I wanted nowt wi' his fondness," Sarah said in a hard tone. "And I want no mewling about him now, as I said afore!"