The girl had thrown herself on the bed, the younger children, who were standing huddled together in a corner, clinging on to her skirts. At the words she leapt to her feet.
“To be kep’ quiet!” echoed she fiercely. “Then clear out o’ ’ere all of yer, if you please. I’ll see as she be kep’ quiet.”
The women quailed before her and made for the door, grumbling; all but she who had spoken last, on whose arm ’Melia laid a detaining hand. Then she threw herself once more on the bed.
“Lord! to think they must needs prate like that just now!” moaned she. “And there ain’t no truth in it neither. No, mother, no, I ain’t a-carryin’ on with no chap, I ain’t. And I’m sorry I didn’t do the shirts for ye, I am. But they’ll all go ’ome to-night, same as if you was well—I swear they will, mother! Oh, Lord! she won’t speak to me—not a word! Whatever is it? Whatever shall I do?”
No, the mother could not speak, but the tired eyes grew quiet and drooped presently in sleep, and there were tears in the black eyes of the daughter as she gazed on her; and the neighbour, busying herself now about the supper and the children, cried as she answered.
“She can’t speak to ye, ’Melia,” said she. “She’s ’ad a stroke. But she won’t die this time. They often lives years arter the first, only they can’t never do no work again. Ye’ll ’ave to work for the lot. It’s ’ard on ye, dear, but ye’ve ’ad yer turn.”
And as she sat through the silent night, watching tenderly over the mother whom she had neglected, and who had so bravely toiled for her, and so proudly defended her, ’Melia looked her future quietly in the face.
Yes; she would have to work for the lot. There would be no more larking. Would there be no more love-making either? Would she never find that out which she had not even desired to know till of late, which she had been so nearly finding out to-night? The sound, common-sense of her present nature told her that it was more than likely. How many men would care to saddle themselves with a bed-ridden mother and a parcel of brats?
Was ’Melia repenting as he had said she should repent—repenting that broken tryst that she knew in her heart she should never, never keep? All her life she had always had what she wanted. But she had never wanted anything as she wanted the love of this one man, who was a stranger to her, and who was even now tramping away from her, miles away already along the dusty road that led to the nearest town.
Every year when the harvest moon drew near the hoppers gathered into the camp beneath the hill, and made their fires beside the straw huts in the hollow, and every year the picking went on busily in the fields; but there were some folk who said that there never was such a merry “hopping” as there had been that year—for ’Melia never got time to go back to it.