Joe shuffled uneasily towards the hearth.
"I misdoubt it, mother; ay, I misdoubt it. Sure as there's a fooil aboon ground, it's young Lummax. He meäns to wed her, an' she'll live off th' fat o' th' land. It war just what they wanted, it war."
"Tha'rt a bonny un, Joe, wi' thy dog i' th' manger ways," croaked the grandmother. "Tha'll be shut o' thy wife for gooid an' all, an' here tha'rt come whining 'cos Kate's made thee a free man."
"But it war just what they wanted, it war," persisted Joe, doggedly. "Without ever a 'by your leave' comes Lummax to Teewit yester morn, an' cuddles an' kisses Kate, an' away they wend to Marshcotes Manor, same as if a man's wife war fair ony fowks's belonging but hisn what wedded her. Ay, an' th' mother took 'em in, too."
"Joe, tha's been lang i' coming. Why didn't 'a slip across th' moor yestreen to tell a body?"
"'Cos I war ower drunk, if tha wants to know." A long-tried sense of the efficacy of this excuse had made it almost a formula with Joe.
She looked at him with a grin of good fellowship; yet under the grin was a touch of wistfulness, a weird, abortive echo of the yearning which had once centred itself round Joe's mother.
"It taks a lot to bring thee to thy grandam, lad. Tha willun't wend a step out o' thy way to clap een on her, without tha's harder set to 't nor or'nary. Tha mud ha' getten drunk here, Joe, if tha'd fashed thyseln to come for 't," she finished, in a plaintive key.
Joe's face cleared perceptibly.