"Well, it was something I did not quite understand, about some Smith or other; but I saw it made you very angry, so that you left the room."
"Yes, I should think so, to be insulted in that way! It was a shame, and that is how they go on with me, as if it was my fault not being married. But it all serves me right, it does!" And then poor Elizabeth made known to her brother the great grievance of her life, adding—
"And ever since then, whenever I have wanted to buy anything for myself, and have had to get the money out of them, I am sure to be told of it. And father is as bad as another about it every bit, for he is getting more stingy than ever, and it is as much as I can do to get a decent Sunday dress or bonnet; as you must have seen how old mine are," continued Elizabeth, ready to cry with vexation.
"Don't distress yourself about that, Elizabeth," said Walter, soothingly; "perhaps that trouble can be remedied easier than you think for. I haven't said much about it, but I happen to have a little money more than I want, and before I go—But, my dear, I am feeling very faint."
He said this with difficulty and panting. "I think the walk has been too much for my strength; I must rest somewhere."
It was evident to Elizabeth, now that she turned her eyes on him, that her brother was fearfully exhausted. The walk from Low Beech to High Beech was not a long one, but it was all up hill, and the afternoon sun beat upon them hotly. Plainly, Walter had overtaxed his strength. Fortunately, as it seemed, they were near George's farm now, and there they could rest. Still nearer to them was the garden gate—that gate which opened into the filbert alley, with the holly arbour at the end of it, which Walter had such good cause for remembering, and which he had not yet cared to revisit.
"Let us go into the summer-house before we go indoors," said Walter, painfully; "it will be cool there, and we can have our talk out all by ourselves when I am rested a bit."
And so the garden gate was passed through, and the brother and sister walked silently up the alley, and Elizabeth took off her shawl and wrapped it carefully round Walter, so that he should not get chilled, she said.
And Walter with unwonted tenderness, took his sister's hand, roughened by hard work, and put it to his lips, and a tear fell upon it in the short moment that he held it there. All this Elizabeth afterwards remembered.
There are times when hard, practical men and women, who, if they have feelings, think it a weakness to make display of them, seem to lose their boasted self-command and become as little children. It was so with Elizabeth Wilson, as she sat in the holly arbour with her hand still clasped in her brother's. It may be that the sight of his pale face, rendered more ghastly by the dark beard which concealed the lower part of it, and of his shrunken limbs, and the touch of the weak, bony, nerveless hand which held hers in its cold clasp, had something to do with the change which came over her. Or perhaps the kind, gentle, brotherly tone Walter had adopted towards her in their previous conversation softened her. But whatever might be the cause, her rugged temper broke down, and tears which she at most times would have scorned to see on another woman's face, and which rarely moistened her own, at any rate when there were any to see them, began to run down her cheeks without any attempt on her part to check or to hide them. Presently she spoke.