The poor aunt, this bitterness grieved her for her niece.
They were interrupted by the ping of the shop-bell, and Harry’s call of “Right!” But as he did not come in at once, Fanny, feeling solicitous for him presumably at the moment, rose and went into the shop. She saw a cart outside, and went to the door.
And the moment she stood in the doorway, she heard a woman’s common vituperative voice crying from the darkness of the opposite side of the road:
“Tha’rt theer, ar ter? I’ll shame thee, Mester. I’ll shame thee, see if I dunna.”
Startled, Fanny stared across the darkness, and saw a woman in a black bonnet go under one of the lamps up the side street.
Harry and Bill Heather had dragged the trunk off the little dray, and she retreated before them as they came up the shop step with it.
“Wheer shalt ha’e it?” asked Harry.
“Best take it upstairs,” said Fanny.
She went up first to light the gas.
When Heather had gone, and Harry was sitting down having tea and pork pie, Fanny asked: