'What do you want then? Don't sit there as if you was crazy—sighing and muttering.'
'Here, grandfather,' Betty said, approaching the settle and sitting down by her grandfather's side, 'here. I've put a drop of rum in the new milk, now take a draught of it, do, and you will feel quite spry and lively. Come!'
Betty always took a common sense view of things, and she added,—
'You can't feel well if you don't break your fast.'
She succeeded in making the old man swallow half the contents of the thick-lipped mug. Then she put another faggot on the fire, not heeding Dorothy's remark that they should all be smothered with heat, and sat down on the bench at the table, by Bryda's side, to discuss her own breakfast with a keen appetite.
Bryda, who was thinking over the loud, angry voices she had heard on the previous night, connected her grandfather's appearance with some mysterious visitor, who had evidently left the house in anger. So she did not do justice to the particular griddle cake, done to a turn, which Betty had put on her plate.
'Something is wrong,' she whispered to Betty. 'I know there is. I wish we knew what it is.'
They were not left long in doubt. As soon as the scraping of the heavy boots of the farm servants was heard on the brick floor of the back kitchen, where they took their meals, and the benches pushed back by the general servant of the farm, Mr Palmer spoke, jerking his thumb in the direction of the open door.
'Shut yonder door,' he said, 'and come here all of you.'
The girls obeyed, Bryda and Betty seating themselves on either side of their grandfather, while Dorothy Burrow stood before him, her stout red arms uncovered, her elbows stuck on either side of her thick waist, and the frills of her big calico cap blown back from her stolid face.