"You should patch it up with her, and both live here together," said Justin.
"I'm willing, but she's the aggrieved party. Says I drove her out once, and now it is my turn!"
Miss Maybrick produced a rather dirty handkerchief and wiped her eyes, but she did not give way to tears.
"I wish I could give you some tea, but I have none myself till supper-time. I can't keep maids in this desolate house. I've only got one old woman and her nephew attending upon me. It isn't worth while to worry over an establishment if I'm to be turned out of it. Now I've made my moan. Tell me the news of the neighbourhood."
Justin chatted away very pleasantly to her. Anstice for the most part was a listener, but when they were taking their leave of her, Miss Maybrick begged Anstice to come and see her again.
"If you have a car, twelve miles is nothing, and you could take me out for a turn. I have no conveyance of any kind, and shall soon be a bedridden cripple. I'm sure you and I would get on together. I love your dimples, and your smile. Will you come?"
"Indeed I will," Anstice promised her.
"I feel," she said to her husband as they were driving home together, "as if it is to be my mission to drag people out of their loneliness in these Fells. I've had a try with a young life, and now this is an old life. What a wonderful thing the love of home and possessions is to some people! Miss Maybrick would be so much more comfortable in a small modern house amongst neighbours. But she clings to that gloomy old house as if it were a veritable paradise."
"Houses and estates are generally sources of family feuds," said Justin.
"Nothing," said Anstice firmly, "is more distressing than quarrels amongst brothers and sisters."