And the little girl echoed the sentiment, looking up again with her frank eyes in which vindictiveness had not yet learned to dwell. “Do, mother,” she said, being sure of one thing only, and that was that she did not like Jim Casey, because he somehow worked her father ill.
The mother’s face did not relax; she went on ironing desperately, slapping the iron on to the linen and dropping it heavily on to the stand again. But presently she looked up; she was folding the last table-napkin, and she laid it on the pile. Her eyes were full of tears.
“Father ’ll be ’ome soon, I ’spect,” said Sue gently, watching her.
“The Lord knows,” sighed the mother, and if the child had had more worldly wisdom she would have guessed that a fresh sting had crept into her misery; “there be no tellin’! But you ’aven’t got no need to worrit. You go and bring the children in from their play, and get ’em washed, and the supper spread, there’s a good child. I ’ope they ’aven’t strayed far.”
She put up the back of her hand and dried her eyes as she stepped to the door whence a flight of brick stairs led to the road along the cliff’s edge.
All day long storm-clouds had been circling round the distant sister town, and sweeping up across the marsh from the sea, piling themselves together thick and dark, and emptying their heaviness upon the wide, sad land. But, with the westering sun, they had lightened a bit, and there were holes in them that let the blue through in patches, and, above the ramparts of purple downs that enclosed the land that had once been water, they had parted now, leaving a long red line between their own murkiness and the sombre hue of the hills below: in one place the red was of blood, and the black arms of the windmill on the down’s crest made a cross upon it as of a Calvary.
Mrs. Wood did not notice the sunset, but she sighed as she looked out into the waste below, where, slowly and steadily, thick mists were rising from the dykes, or stealthily creeping across the marsh-land.
“My, it ’ave rained a lot,” said she, “the river be big. And I shouldn’t be surprised if we ’ad a nasty sea-fog to-night too.”
“Well,” said the child smiling with quick intention, “father knows ’is way ’cross the marsh, well enough.”
“Oh, I don’t s’pose ’e be likely to lose ’is way at this time o’ day, drunk or sober,” allowed the mother, with another sigh. “That ain’t all.”