“See where he goes!” muttered the old woman, watching her daughter with her red eyes; “so easy and so trim a-horseback, while we are in the mud.”
“And of it,” said her daughter impatiently. “We are mud, underneath his horse’s feet. What should we be?”
In the intentness with which she looked after him again, she made a hasty gesture with her hand when the old woman began to reply, as if her view could be obstructed by mere sound. Her mother watching her, and not him, remained silent; until her kindling glance subsided, and she drew a long breath, as if in the relief of his being gone.
“Deary!” said the old woman then. “Alice! Handsome gall Ally!” She gently shook her sleeve to arouse her attention. “Will you let him go like that, when you can wring money from him? Why, it’s a wickedness, my daughter.”
“Haven’t I told you, that I will not have money from him?” she returned. “And don’t you yet believe me? Did I take his sister’s money? Would I touch a penny, if I knew it, that had gone through his white hands—unless it was, indeed, that I could poison it, and send it back to him? Peace, mother, and come away.”
“And him so rich?” murmured the old woman. “And us so poor!”
“Poor in not being able to pay him any of the harm we owe him,” returned her daughter. “Let him give me that sort of riches, and I’ll take them from him, and use them. Come away. Its no good looking at his horse. Come away, mother!”
But the old woman, for whom the spectacle of Rob the Grinder returning down the street, leading the riderless horse, appeared to have some extraneous interest that it did not possess in itself, surveyed that young man with the utmost earnestness; and seeming to have whatever doubts she entertained, resolved as he drew nearer, glanced at her daughter with brightened eyes and with her finger on her lip, and emerging from the gateway at the moment of his passing, touched him on the shoulder.
“Why, where’s my sprightly Rob been, all this time!” she said, as he turned round.