"How terrible kind! But 'tis no odds. I be bone-wet."
Nevertheless, Mr. Palk unfurled a large, faded, glass-green umbrella over her.
"Give me the basket," he said, "and I'll walk betwixt you and the weather. I come for more reasons than one, Susan. Something's happened while you were to town and I'd sooner you heard it from me than him."
"Nought gone wrong with father?"
"That's for others to say. But something have gone parlous wrong with me."
She started and hugged her blue paper parcel closer. It contained the bottle of brown sherry.
"I hope not, I'm sure."
"In a word, I'm sorry to say I leave Falcon Farm Monday month. It have fallen with a terrible rush upon me—and my own fault too. I can't tell you the reason, but so it is. The master's sacked me; and every right to do so, no doubt, in his own eyes."
Miss Stockman stood still and panted. Her face was wet with rain; her hair touzled; her hat dripping.
"Be you saying truth?" she asked, and fetched a handkerchief from her pocket and dried her face.