“And hasn’t she been kind to her since she married, then?”
“She’s never done her no harm, sir.”
“But she hasn’t gone to see her very often, or asked her to come and see you very often, I suppose?”
“There’s ne’er a one o’ them crossed the door of the other,” he answered, with some evident feeling of his own in the matter.
“Ah; but you don’t approve of that yourself, Stokes?”
“Approve of it? No, sir. I be a farm-labourer once myself; and so I do want to see my own daughter now and then. But she take after her mother, she do. I don’t know which of the two it is as does it, but there’s no coming and going between Carpstone and this.”
We were approaching the house. I told Stokes he had better let her know I was there; for that, if she had changed her mind, it was not too late for me to go home again without disturbing her. He came back saying she was still very anxious to see me.
“Well, Mrs. Stokes, how do you feel to-day?” I asked, by way of opening the conversation. “I don’t think you look much worse.”
“I he much worse, sir. You don’t know what I suffer, or you wouldn’t make so little of it. I be very bad.”
“I know you are very ill, but I hope you are not too ill to tell me why you are so anxious to see me. You have got something to tell me, I suppose.”