“Tummus!” cried his wife.
“Well, what are yow shoutin’ at? I say it again: What’s the good o’ livin’? You on’y get horrid owd, and your missus allus naggin’ you at home, and your Dan Barnetts shoutin’ at you in the garden, or else Master Ellis here giving it to you about something.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tummus,” said his wife. “To go and say such a thing to Mr Ellis’s face, as has allus been a kind friend to you.”
“Aye, lass, I don’t grumble much at he, but we’m do grow precious owd.”
“And a great blessing too, Tummus,” cried his wife. “You don’t hear Mr Ellis complain about getting old.”
“Nay, but then he’s got a pretty bairn, bless her!—as sweet and good a lass as ever stepped; and I says that to Master Ellis’s face, same as I’ve often said it behind his back. Bless her! There!”
James Ellis, with the great care upon his breast—the haunting thought that perhaps, after all, he had had something to do with John Grange’s disappearance—now stood in old Tummus’s cottage a different being. There was none of the rather pompous, important manner that he was in the habit of putting on when addressing his inferiors. The faces of John Grange and Mary seemed to rise before him reproachfully, and, for the first time in his life, he stood before the old couple in the cottage a humbled man, hardly conscious of what was being said.
“Then he took nothing away with him, Hannah?” he said at last.
“No, sir, nothing that I can make out.”
“Nowt!” said old Tummus. “Here he were, hevving his tea that night, looking that down sad, that a bad tater was nowt to him; next thing is as we hears him go out o’ the door—that there door just behind wheer you’re a-standing, Mr Ellis, sir, and he didn’t come back.”