The eastern clouds were rosy with the rays of the rising sun when Lucy stole downstairs and opened the kitchen door. The four-poster stood with its curtains closed like an Arab's tent in lonely gloom. The girl shivered as she looked at it. The thought of the old woman lying within took all the brightness from her eyes and the lightness from her step. She was afraid of her great-grandmother as of something unknown. What right had anyone so old to be still among the living? Her place was with the dead, with the men and women whose names had become a faint memory in the dale, but who were to her personalities, that she had touched and handled. Lucy's mother had died when she was a baby, and the grim old figure, that sometimes rocked her cradle, had filled her infant mind with fear. Now that she had grown to womanhood the fear remained, though she hid it under a gay and careless demeanour. Still, the shadow of her great-grandmother fell like a blight on Lucy's life.
She tiptoed to the fireplace and soon had the smouldering turf in a glow. Then, opening the outer door and stepping out into the sunlight, she filled the kettle at the spring. It was a fair morning. The chorus of birds had ceased and busy feathered things were marketing among the sprouting green of the beck-side. Far away up the dale she saw the red cows move, and knew that Barbara was somewhere near, driving them to new pastures. Thundergay was still swathed with smokelike mists, rolling upwards in the breeze, and gradually disclosing grey precipices, and slatey screes, with here and there patches of emerald, where the young ferns were beginning to spring, and higher up, wide fields of snow. Lucy paused to pluck a cluster of primroses, and place them in her hair. But she was startled by a cough from a stunted tree near. Among its knarled roots crouched a little figure, wrapped in a sack to keep itself warm.
"Oh, it's you, Jan!" said Lucy. "I thought you were a sheep coughing. You should have stayed in bed to-day and taken a rest."
The creature raised a pair of watery eyes to her face, then dropped them.
"I's always gotten up at dawn," was the reply.
"But it's so cold!"
Again the pale eyes were raised and dropped.
"Verra cold, lass."
"You must come to the kitchen."
"Nay."