“Wanter know?” cried Silas, his imagination refusing to grasp such awful loss.
“Wal, I knowed Jim, an' he got mer-ried——”
“Merried!” from both the old parents. “He did. He says, 'I wunt write the home-folks till I'm well off, for mother will worrit an' blame me, an' I hain't money, but Minnie an' I love each other, an' are satisfied with little.'”
“Minnie,” the mother repeated. “Was she pretty?”
“Woman all over you be, to ask thet, an' she was,” said Brown, sadly; “with dark eyes, sorter wistful, an' hair like crinkled sunshine, an' a laugh like a merry child, fur trouble slipped off her shoulders like water off a duck's back.”
“An' they got prosperous?” asked Silas uneasily.
“They was happy,” said Brown with gentle dignity; “they was alius happy, but they lived under a mortgage, an' it was drift from pillar to post, an' ups an' downs.
“An' they're poor now,” muttered Silas, visions of Jim and his family to support coming to him.
“Hush!” cried Maria. “Tell me, sir, was there children? Oh, the heart hunger I've had for the sound of a child's voice, the touch of baby hands. You an' me grandpa and grandma, Sile! an', my God! you think of money now.”
“Set calm,” pleaded Brown, “for I must hev courage to tell ye all.”