"You are better, Nance," she said one day, when she had been sitting long on the rocks gazing out to sea, in one of those deep reveries so frequent with her now, "and if I paid Peggi 'Bullet' for living with you and attending to you, would you mind my going away? I feel I cannot rest any longer here; I must get something to do—something to fill my empty hands and my empty heart."
"No, calon fâch," said Nance the unselfish, "I will not mind at all, I am thinking myself that it is not good for you to stay here brooding over your sorrow. Peggi 'Bullet' and I have been like sisters since the time when we were girls, and harvested together, and went together to gather wool on the sheep mountains. You have made me so rich, too, my dear, that I shall be quite comfortable; but you will come and see me again before very long, if I live?"
"Oh, yes, Nance. People who have asthma often live to be very old. You know that, wherever I am, I will be continually thinking of you, and of the little green corner up there in the rock churchyard; and I will come back sometimes to see you."
"But where will you go, my dear?"
"To my sister. Ever since this trouble has come upon me I have longed for a sister's love, and now I think I will go to her I will tell her all my troubles, and ask her to help me to find employment."
"Perhaps she has never heard of you—what do I know?—and perhaps she will spurn you when she hears your story. If she does, come back to old Nance, my dear; her arms will always be open to receive you. Yes, begin the world again. Caton pawb! you are only twenty now You have your life before you; you may marry, child, in spite of all that has happened."
"Nance!" said Valmai, and the depth of reproach and even injury in her voice made plain to Nance that she must never suggest such a thing again.
"Don't be angry with me, my dear!"
"Angry with you! No, I am only thinking how little you know—how little you know. But where shall I find my sister? You said once you had her address, where is it?"
"Oh, anwl! I don't know. Somewhere in the loft—" and Nance looked up at the brown rafters. "I haven't seen it for twenty years, but it's sure to be there, I remember, then somebody wrote it out for me, and I tied it up with a packet of other papers. They are in an old teapot on the top of the wall under the thatch, just there, my child, over the door. You must get the ladder and go up. It is many a long year since I have climbed up there."