"I won't have you in t'house!" she cried angrily to his dim form. "Be off with you now, and look sharp about it!"
But again he seemed to be pleasantly cheered by her wrath, as if with a happy echo from the past.
"I'll shin off right quick when I've had a word," he coaxed. "Come on in, old woman, and look at me where there's a bit more sun!" The flickering light seemed to beckon him on, for he began to move towards its dim dwelling. "I've news of Geordie for you," he called back to her, as she did not stir. "You'll sure be wanting to hear that!"
She heard him pass into the kitchen, his firm, confident tread raising a ring from every flag, and wondered, as with the knocking, why it did not carry all over the marsh. But still she stayed behind, fighting with herself and with the longing to hear his news. It could be of nothing but failure, she reminded herself, and her heart answered that that would be better than nothing at all. She heard him walking about the kitchen, as if he walked from this memory to that, peering into old cupboards and laying a hand upon old chairs. Presently, however, there came a silence as if he had seen enough, and, in a sudden panic lest he should be gone, she hurried after him into the room.
At once, as she went in, she traced the shape of him on the hearth, though she could not see his huge shadow that climbed the ceiling and swamped the wall. Clearly, too, she could feel his dominant personality all about, too heady a wine for the frail, cob webbed bottle of the place. Paused on the hearth, he was still looking around him with a wistful, humorous smile. He was thinking, as all think who return, how strong and yet how slender was the chain, how futile and yet how tenacious were the humble things which had held him through the years! He was thinking, too, how amazingly tiny everything had grown,--the house, the kitchen, and the old woman within the door. Even the stretch of sand, which he could vaguely see, seemed narrow to him who had known much greater wastes.
He turned his smiling eyes suddenly to Sarah's face.
"How's the old man, by the way? Still keeping uppermost of the weeds?"
"He's nobbut middlin', that's all," she forced herself to reply.
"Is he anywhere about?"
"Like enough ... but you needn't wait."