Chapter Nineteen.
A Night Journey.
“And he must post, without delay,
Along the bridge and through the dale.
And by the church and o’er the down.”
Wordsworth.
John Hewlett had finished his day’s work, and come home in the dusk of an October evening. He found the house hung all over with the family linen, taken in to shelter from a shower; but not before it had become damp enough to need to be put by the fire before it could be ironed or folded. His mother was moaning over it, and there was no place to sit down. He did not wonder that Jem had taken his hunch of bread and gone away with it, nor that his father was not at home; but he took off his boots at the back door, as his aunt never liked his coming into her room in them—though they were nothing to what he would have worn had he worked in the fields—and then climbed up the stairs.
Judith was sitting up in bed, with her teapot, tea-cup, and a piece of stale loaf, laid out on a tray before her; and little Judy beside her, drinking out of a cracked mug. Judith’s eyes had a strange look of fright in them, but there was an air of relief when she saw Johnnie.
“Well, aunt, is that all you have got for tea?”
“Poor mother has been hindered; but never mind that,” returned Judith, in a quick, agitated tone. “Judy, my dear, drink up your tea and run down to help mother, there’s a dear.”
“You haven’t brought nothing, Johnnie,” Judy lingered to ask.
“No, not I. I’ve worked too late to go to shop,” said Johnnie.