"Not I," said Luke, warmly. "Why, Mistress Margaret, I am your neighbour, and I do very well at the coopering. I can carry your basket for you before or after my day's work, and welcome. You have no need to pay me anything. 'Tisn't as if we were strangers, ye know."
"Why, Master Luke, I know your face, for that matter; but I cannot call to mind that ever a word passed between us."
"Oh yes, you did, Mistress Margaret. What have you forgotten? One day you were trying to carry your baby and eke your pitcher full o' water: and, quo' I, 'Give me the baby to carry.' 'Nay,' says you, 'I'll give you the pitcher, and keep the bairn myself:' and I carried the pitcher home, and you took it from me at this door, and you said to me, 'I am muckle obliged to you, young man,' with such a sweet voice; not like the folk in this street speak to a body."
"I do mind now, Master Luke; and methinks it was the least I could say."
"Well, Mistress Margaret, if you will say as much every time I carry your basket, I care not how often I bear it, nor how far."
"Nay, nay," said Margaret, colouring faintly. "I would not put upon good nature. You are young, Master Luke, and kindly. Say I give you your supper on Saturday night, when you bring the linen home, and your dawn-mete o' Monday; would that make us anyways even?"
"As you please; only say not I sought a couple o' diets, I, for such a trifle as yon."
With chubby-faced Luke's timely assistance, and the health and strength which Heaven gave this poor young woman, to balance her many ills, the house went pretty smoothly awhile. But the heart became more and more troubled by Gerard's long and now most mysterious silence.
And then that mental torture, Suspense, began to tear her heavy heart with his hot pinchers, till she cried often and vehemently, "Oh, that I could know the worst."
While she was in this state, one day she heard a heavy step mount the stair. She started and trembled. "That is no step that I know. Ill tidings!"