“I warn’t going to stop ’em.”
“Not you, mester. Yow’d sooner set ’em on, like you do your mates, and nice things come on it wi’ your strikes and powder, and your wife and bairns wi’ empty cupboard. Yow on’y let me know o’ next meeting, and if I don’t come and give the men a bit o’ my mind, my name arn’t Jane Gentles.”
“Yow’d best keep thy tongue still.”
“Mebbe you think so, my man, but I don’t.”
My senses had come back, and I was staring about at the clean kitchen I was in, with carefully blackleaded grate and red-brick floor. Against the open door, looking out upon the dam, and smoking his pipe, stood—there was no mistaking him—our late man, Gentles; while over me with a sponge in her hand, and a basin of water by her on a chair, was a big broad-shouldered woman with great bare arms and a pleasant homely face, whose dark hair was neatly kept and streaked with grey.
She saw that I was coming to, and smiled down at me, showing a set of very white teeth, and her plump face looked motherly and pleasant as she bent down and laid her hand upon my forehead.
“That’s bonny,” she said, nodding her head at me. “You lie still a bit and I’ll mak you a cup o’ tea, and yo’ll be aw reight again. I’m glad I caught ’em at it. Some on ’em’s going to hev sore bones for that job, and so I tell ’em.”
I took her hand and held it in mine, feeling very weak and dreamy still, and I saw Gentles shift round and give me a hasty glance, and then twist himself more round with his back to me.
“Howd up a minute,” she said, passing one strong arm under me and lifting me as if I had been a baby; and almost before I had realised it she slipped off my jacket and placed a cushion beneath my head.
“There, now, lie still,” she said, dabbing my wet hair with a towel. “Go to sleep if you can.”