“I should na be less lonely any wheer else,” she said to Anice Barholm. “Theer's more here as I feel near to than i' any other place. I ha' no friends, yo' know. As to th' choild, I con carry it to Thwaite's wife i' th' mornin' when I go to th' pit, an' she'll look after it till neet, for a trifle. She's getten childern o' her own, and knows their ways.”
So she went backward and forward night and morning with her little burden in her arms. The child was a frail, tiny creature, never strong, and often suffering, and its very frailty drew Joan nearer to it. It was sadly like Liz, pretty and infantine. Many a rough but experienced mother, seeing it, prophesied that its battle with life would be brief. With the pretty face, it had inherited also the helpless, irresolute, appealing look. Joan saw this in the baby's eyes sometimes and was startled at its familiarity; even the low, fretted cry had in it something that was painfully like its girl-mother's voice. More than once a sense of fear had come upon Joan when she heard and recognized it. But her love only seemed to strengthen with her dread.
Day by day those who worked with her felt more strongly the change developing so subtly in the girl. The massive beauty which had almost seemed to scorn itself was beginning to wear a different aspect; the defiant bitterness of look and tone was almost a thing of the past; the rough, contemptuous speech was less scathing and more merciful when at rare intervals it broke forth.
“Summat has coom over her,” they said among themselves. “Happen it wur trouble. She wur different, somehow.”
They were somewhat uneasy under this alteration; but, on the whole, the general feeling was by no means unfriendly. Time had been when they had known Joan Lowrie only as a “lass” who held herself aloof, and yet in a manner overruled them; but in these days more than one stunted, overworked girl or woman found her hard task rendered easier by Joan's strength and swiftness.
It was true that his quiet and unremitted efforts had smoothed Grace's path to some extent. There were ill-used women whom he had helped and comforted; there were neglected children whose lives he had contrived to brighten; there were unbelievers whose scoffing his gentle simplicity and long-suffering had checked a little. He could be regarded no longer with contempt in Riggan; he even had his friends there.
Among those who still mildly jeered at the little Parson stood foremost, far more through vanity than malice, “Owd Sammy Craddock.” A couple of months after Lowrie's death, “Owd Sammy” had sauntered down to the mine one day, and was entertaining a group of admirers when Grace went by.
It chanced that, for some reason best known to himself, Sammy was by no means in a good humor. Something had gone wrong at home or abroad, and his grievance had rankled and rendered him unusually contumacious.
Nearing the group, Grace looked up with a faint but kindly smile.
“Good-morning!” he said; “a pleasant day, friends!”