“Ah want a word wi’ t’ young lady,” said he. “She knaws me. I work for Mr. Cornthwaite down at t’ works in t’ town yonder.”
“Oh, ay; Ah’ve heard of ’un. He’s gotten t’ coin, and,” with a significant gesture in the direction of the farmhouse, “we haven’t.”
“You work on t’ farm here?” asked Bram.
The man answered in a tone and with a look which implied that affairs on the farm were in anything but a flourishing condition—
“Ay, Ah work on t’ farm.”
And, apparently satisfied of the honesty of Bram’s intentions, or else careless of the safety of his master’s property, the laborer nodded good-night, and walked up the hill towards a straggling row of cottages which bordered the higher side of the road near the summit.
Bram got back into the farmyard, and waited for the appearance at the broken door of some occupant of the house to whom he could make his excuses for the damage he had done. He had a shrewd suspicion who that occupant would be. Since all the noise and commotion he and Theodore Biron had made had not brought a single servant upon the scene, it was natural to infer that Mr. Biron and his daughter had the house to themselves.
And this idea filled Bram with wonder and compassion. What a life for a young girl, who had seemed to rough Bram the epitome of all womanly beauty and grace and charm, was this which accident had revealed to him. A life full of humiliations, of terrors, of anxieties which would have broken the heart and the spirit of many an older woman. Instead of being a spoilt young beauty, with every wish forestalled, every caprice gratified, his goddess was only a poor little girl who lived in an atmosphere of petty cares, petty worries, under the shadow of a great trouble, her father’s vice of drink.
And as he thought about the girl in this new aspect his new-born infatuation seemed to die away, the glamour and the glow faded, and he thought of her only as a poor little nestling which, deprived of its natural right of warmth and love and tenderness, lives a starved life, but bears its privations with a brave look.
And as he leaned against the yellow-washed wall he heard a slight noise, and started up.