“Best come into the house, hadn’t you?” he said, evading it for the moment, and gently urging her back again in the direction from which she had come. “It’s getting damp out here.”
She nodded her head with a docility which sat strangely upon her, and, still holding to his arm, allowed him to lead her back. She said nothing more as they went, only catching at her breath from time to time with little signals of distress which awoke in him a succession of answering quivers. The gardens saw them enter the house together, and disappear into the further gloom of the kitchen.
The sight of the red tablecloth aroused her temporarily, as it had done before. “Eh, now! You’ve never had your tea,” she sighed, shocked out of her preoccupation by that great forgetfulness.
“I’ll get a bite of something presently,” Kirkby said, taking off his hat with the limp gesture of a man whose weariness had long since passed the stage of desire for food and drink. “It’s you I’m bothered about. What’s been to do you’ve gone and got yourself in such a state?”
She dropped back into the seat from which she had raised herself in order to go to him, and sank her head on her hand.
“It’s just that,” she said. “We can’t go.... I’ve seen it coming on like all day, and now it’s come to bide.”
He eyed her thoughtfully, not daring to take what she said literally,—scarcely, indeed, wishing at that moment to take it literally.... “You’re over-tired, that’s what it is,” he said, at last. “You haven’t hurt yourself, have you, pulling that furniture about?”
“Nay, I’ve taken no harm.”
“Likely you haven’t thought on to get your own tea, neither?” he enquired.
“Ay, but I have,—and a rare good tea an’ all!” She winced at the remembrance, recalling the happy half-hour which she and Dolly had spent before Cousin Jessie had struck her to the heart.... “But we can’t go.”