"Learning! Hasn't she enough learning for any lass, and more than most? Doesn't she ken the lift like the palm of her hand, and the dales and fells better than her ten toes?"
"It's book-learning Barbara wants."
"Book-learning! I don't hold with book-learning. Hark to me, great-granddaughter. You'll be a good lass, and when I's gone there'll be a nice little sum put by for you and your sister. Now, see to your work; the porridge is burning," and the old woman sniffed the air disdainfully.
"Oh," said Lucy, with a shrug of her shoulders, "Mickle Crags will have buried us all by then—you and me and Barbara and the money, all in one grave."
"Hold thy tongue," replied the old woman calmly, but with such an edge to her words that Lucy kept her peace.
Later in the day Lucy went up the dale to find Barbara. She eagerly drank in the sunlight. It comforted her like a cup of sweet wine. From the mosses of the beck-side, where she followed the cattle road, a whispering could be heard as of life—innumerable, and infinitesimal—waking to activity after its long winter sleep. Bees were buzzing; birds were mating; the village geese, in charge of a goose-girl, were being driven to their feeding grounds; Tom, the new hind, with a boy to drive the horses, was ploughing in a steep field; and Jan Straw was gathering rushes. Everything was up and active.
The dale in which Greystones was situated wound into the heart of Thundergay. On the right rose Nab Head—a grey bastion streaked with little streams trickling from the melting snows, and now all aglitter in the sun. On the left, gloomy as its name, hung Darkling Crag. The dale lay between like a green lizard, basking in the warm light. It was green with marsh-mosses, and soon would be yellow with king-cups. Lucy sang to herself as she climbed upward:
"Oh! have you found my golden ball?
And have you come to set me free?
Or have you come to see me hanging
On the gallows tree?"
There was no smile upon her face, but her eyes were wistful. She was hoping that Joel Hart would soon find a golden ball and come to set her free, before Greystones, and the tyrannical old woman there, had robbed her life of its youth and sweetness. She was just twenty, and panting to spread her wings and fly away. She turned round to look at her home.