And she too stumped down the broken steps.
“I know I ’aven’t done the best for you and the little ’uns since father went,” whimpered the mother. “But father were allers fust, and I never couldn’t do nothin’ when ’e weren’t by. Ye’ll forgive me for it, Sue, and p’r’aps God will too.”
The child did not answer for a moment. Then she said simply:
“O’ course father were allers fust.”
And wearily the mother repeated:
“Yes, father were allers fust.”
HIS LITTLE MAID
HIS LITTLE MAID
The waning of the hot midsummer day spread its mellow sunlight and its long shadows across the marsh-land beside the sea. The haymakers had been busy since daybreak; men, women and children labouring through the hot hours, when the whole level was one scarcely varied monotony of golden haze on soft-green meadows and pastures that grew yellower as they neared the yellow beach; when the sun caked the pale brown earth in the furrows between the crops and drew faint odours from the rush-grown banks of the dykes where the moor-hen hid and the yellow iris bloomed; when the blue waves sparkled, and the shots and shades of the shallows purpled beneath the sun shining on the sea, and brought the only sense of freshness that came to the sun-steeped plain.
But now slender amethyst clouds barred the horizon and shed parallel shadows where the sky and sea melted together; the long line of white foreland to left grew clearer beneath the slanting rays; the sun was near to setting and the labourers were near to their rest.