“Ay, but I am.”
“Let her have Tibbie’s barns?” Mrs. Tanner almost shrieked.
“Ay.”
“Her as her own lad——!”
“I’ve tellt you ay.”
There was a pause after that, during which none of them moved, while behind them the sword grew smaller and shivered and dimmed. Mrs. Tanner’s lips trembled, and her eyes filled with her ready tears. She felt the presence of something between the two women that she could not fathom, something that, for the moment at least, it was no use trying to attack. She consoled herself with the thought that her poor friend would probably look at things differently to-morrow, especially after she had seen the forlorn little orphans—and Tibbie. But the new development had made her feel awkward and tongue-tied as well as afraid, and she was thankful when young Mrs. James appeared, cautiously peeping in.
“I just wanted to say about filling that bottle!” she began in a powerful whisper, too dazzled at first by the sword to see anybody but Mrs. Tanner. “Don’t fill it too full, you’ll think on, or it’ll likely burst....” Her eyes discovered the two by the table, and she gave a gasp. “Eh, Mrs. Catterall, yon’s never you!”
Emma said “Ay, it’s me,” in her usual smooth tones, but Mrs. Clapham said nothing; and the owner of the bottle, feeling uncomfortable and abashed, was on the point of backing out again when Mrs. Tanner stopped her. With a jerk of her thumb towards the two by the hearth, she indicated that something was wrong, and that Mrs. James must help to amend it. The latter gaped and gasped a second time, and then stopped backing and edged in; and directly afterwards Mrs. Airey and Mrs. Dunn appeared at the door. They, too, however, when they had recovered from the spectacle of a seated Emma, became conscious of the tenseness in the room and prepared to depart; but they also were glued to the spot by Mrs. Tanner’s urgently raised eyebrows and meaningly-jerked thumb.
“Ay, I tellt her one of us would be right glad to stop the night with her, if she felt that way inclined,” she began to flow forth suddenly in determined torrents of talk. “She’s ter’ble down now, poor soul—ay, ter’ble bothered and down! She’ll feel a deal better while morning, likely, and a deal better after the funeral. There’s summat comforting like, I always think, in seeing folks properly finished off.... Let’s see now—I’ll get her her bit o’ supper and see her to bed, and the three on you can settle amongst you which on you’ll stop the night. I’d stop myself, for the matter o’ that (ay, and glad to do it an’ all), but as I’ll be going with her to-morrow, I’ll be wanting a bit o’ rest.”
Emma’s voice fell smooth as an oiled hand across her passionate twitters and chirps. “No need for you to put yourself about over that, Mrs. Tanner,” she observed quietly. “I’ll be going with her myself, seeing the children is coming to me.”