"No," said Lydia soberly. She looked absent-minded, as if she sought about for what did worry her.
"You don't think your father's working too hard, planting?"
"Oh, no! It's good for him. He gets frightfully tired. They both do. But Farvie sleeps and eats and smokes. And laughs! That's Jeffrey. He can always make Farvie laugh." She said the last rather wonderingly, because she knew Jeffrey hadn't, so far as she had seen him, much light give and take and certainly no hilarity of his own. "But I suppose," she added wisely, as she had many times to herself, "Farvie's so pleased even to look at him and think he's got him back."
Miss Amabel disposed a pillow more invitingly on the old sofa that had spacious hollows in it, and Lydia obeyed the motion and lay down. It was not, she thought, because she was tired. Only it would please Miss Amabel. But the heart had gone out of her. If she looked as she felt, she realised she must be wan. But it takes more than the sorrows of youth to wash the colour out of it. She felt an impulse now to give herself away.
"It's only," she said, "we're not getting anywhere. That worries me."
"With your work?" Miss Amabel was waving a palm-leaf fan, from no necessity but the tranquillity induced by its rhythmic sway.
"Oh, no. About Jeffrey. Didn't you know we meant to clear him, Anne and I?"
"Clear him, dear? What of?"
"Why, what he was accused of," said Lydia.
"But he had his trial, you know. He was found guilty. He pleaded guilty, dear. That was why he was sentenced."