Eliza had followed the explanation with lowering brows, but now she burst into one of her great laughs.
"Losh, Sarah, woman! but I'd have a better tale than that! What, you'd never ha' let him give in his notice, and you wi' your tongue in your cheek all the time! ... When did you get yon precious letter o' yours?" she enquired swiftly, switching on to another track.
"Just last minute this morning as we was starting off." Sarah was thoroughly launched now on her wild career. Each detail as she required it rose triumphantly to her lips. "Simon was back in t'stable wi' t'horse when postman come, so I put it away in my pocket and settled to say nowt. I thought it was likely axing for money or summat like that, and Simon had more than enough to bother him as it was. I got May Fleming to read it for me at doctor's," she finished simply, with a supreme touch. "I'm terble bad wi' my eyes, Eliza, if you'll trouble to think on."
Once again Eliza was forced to belief against her will, and then once again she leaped at the only discrepancy in the tale.
"You could ha' tellt Simon easy enough on the road out!" she threw at her in a swift taunt. "There's time for a deal o' telling at your rate o' speed!"
But now, to her vexed surprise, it was Sarah who laughed, and with a society smoothness that would have been hard to beat. It was in matters like these that the dream lifted her into another sphere, puzzling her clumsy antagonist by the finer air she seemed to breathe.
"Eh, now, Eliza!" she said good-humouredly, and with something almost like kindliness in her voice, "whatever-like use is it telling a man owt when he's chock full o' summat else? Simon was fit to crack himself over some joke as he'd heard in Witham, talking a deal o' nonsense and laughing fit to shake the trap! Coming from market's no time any day for telling a man important news, and anyway I'd never ha' got a word in edgeways if I'd tried." She paused a moment, and then continued, aspiring to still greater heights. "I'd another reason an' all for wanting it kept quiet. I knew he'd be sure an' certain to go shouting it out here."
"Ay, and why ever not, I'd like to know!" Eliza gasped, when she was able to speak. "Come to that, you were smart enough shoving it down our throats yourself!"
"Ay, but that was because I lost my temper," Sarah admitted, with a noble simplicity which again struck the other dumb. "If I hadn't ha' lost my temper," she added, "I should ha' said nowt,--nowt!"--a statement so perfectly true in itself that it needed nothing to make it tell. "I never meant you should hear it so sudden-like," she went on gently, the kindness growing in her voice. "It's hard lines our Geordie should ha' done so well for himself, and not your Jim. I never meant to crow over you about it, Eliza,--I didn't, indeed. I never thought o' such a thing!"
Eliza was making a noise like a motor-car trying to start, but Sarah took up her tale before she could reply.