Cilla turned, and her smile was quick and eager. She was glad just now for a respite from her thoughts. “Lord help other folk, Mrs. Lister,” she answered briskly. “Have you ever tried that medicine?”
The widow sighed and her eyes sought the ground meekly. “Chit of a girl,” she was thinking, “to go lecturing me. As if I didn’t spend all my days i’ worriting about other folks’ troubles. Am always the first, I, to find troubles out. But, then, she doesn’t know what the fever means, the lile, daft lass.”
Dan had taken a look at the sun, his only timepiece, and had grown alert on the sudden.
“Will bid you good day, Miss Cilla,” he said, touching his cap. “’Tis five of the clock, or thereabouts, an’ I promised Billy the Fool to bellows-blow for him. He gets terrible short i’ the temper, does Billy, if I’m not there to a minute.”
Widow Lister followed him down the road. “Oh, Dan, my lad!” she called after him. “Tell Billy he’s never mended my bit of a window-fastener yet. David promised to do it, an’ went overseas; then Billy said he’d do the job; but men are all of a pattern, so ’twould seem.”
Cilla watched the two of them out of sight. Well as she knew the widow, there was something unexpected, ludicrous almost, in her remembrance of the window-fastener. The fever had come to Ghyll, it might steal down to Garth before the month was out; yet Widow Lister, in the midst of childish fright, could remember that David had left one job undone when he set sail for Canada.
“What’s amiss, lile lass?” asked her father, coming down the highway and seeing the troubled look on her face.
“Oh, nothing, father. The day has been overwarm, and I’m feeling it, maybe—”
“Now, don’t go blaming the weather,” roared Yeoman Hirst, admitting all the parish into his confidence. “Weather comes, and it goes. There needs be more than that to shake you, Cilla.”
She told her news and Yeoman Hirst stood very still for a moment. He was afraid, and he was conquering his fear.