“In coorse I did. Leastways, I reckon I did. I telled her she weren’t to meddle again in aught that concerned yo’.”
“Whose children are those—yours?” Mr. Thornton had a pretty good notion whose they were, from what he had heard; but he felt awkward in turning the conversation round from this unpromising beginning.
“They’re not mine, and they are mine.”
“They are the children you spoke of to me this morning?”
“When yo’ said,” replied Higgins, turning round, with ill-smothered fierceness, “that my story might be true or might not, but it were a very unlikely one. Measter, I’ve not forgotten.”
Mr. Thornton was silent for a moment; then he said: “No more have I. I remember what I said. I spoke to you about those children in a way I had no business to. I did not believe you. I could not have taken care of another man’s children myself, if he had acted towards me as I hear Boucher did towards you. But I know now you spoke truth. I beg your pardon.”
Higgins did not turn round, or immediately respond to this. But when he did speak, it was in a softened tone, although the words were gruff enough.
“Yo’ve no business to go prying into what happened between Boucher and me. He’s dead, and I’m sorry. That’s enough.”
“So it is. Will you take work with me? That’s what I came to ask.”
Higgins’s obstinacy wavered, recovered strength, and stood firm. He would not speak. Mr. Thornton would not ask again. Higgins’s eye fell on the children.