Phoebe read the project in a flash, but yet invited her husband to explain.
“What d’you mean?” she asked distrustfully and coldly.
“I can see in your face you knaw well enough. That four-hunderd-odd pound. I’ve sometimes thought I should have given Chris a bit of the windfall when first it comed. But now—well, theer’s this cruel coil failed on ’em. You knaw the hardness of waiting. ’Twould be a butivul thing to let ’em marry an’ feel’t was thanks to us.”
“You want to go giving them money?”
“Not ’give’ ’zactly. Us’ll call it a loan, till the time they see their way clearer.”
Phoebe sighed and was silent for a while.
“Poor dears,” she said at length. “I feel for ’em in my heart, same as you do; yet somehow it doan’t look right.”
“Not right, Phoebe?”
“Not wise, then. Remember what you say the winters be up here—such dreary months with no money coming in and all gwaine out to keep life in the things.”
“’Tis a black, bitin’ business on the high farms—caan’t deny that.”