“She begins to get aboot, but for a time she was near away with it, and Joe Tyson sent for’s niece in Canada.”
“Is Miss Forsyth now at Whinnyates?”
“She was there in t’morning when I started for market, but Joe was yoking pony to tak’ her to Langrigg, and he reckoned she’d stop for t’night. D’ye ken Miss Forsyth?”
Kit said he met Alison in Canada, and the other resumed: “Then, ye ken a leal, kind lass! She came back four thousand miles to nurse her aunt, and Joe reckons she did as much as doctor to pull old body round——”
He slowed at an awkward corner, and Kit speculated about Alison. If Mrs. Tyson did not need her she might return to the creamery, and Kit hoped she would do so. Alison ought not to remain at Whinnyates; she had qualities and talents she could not use at the lonely farm, but if she did not go soon the moors might claim her. One lost the alert keenness Canadians valued, and in the bleak dales a woman’s work was hard. Kit hated to picture Alison’s laboring at the byres and perhaps in the fields.
Then a pale yellow beam touched the road and he looked about. Thin mist rolled across the broken moor and vague, dark hills melted in thunder-clouds. The road curved across open heath, and white, wild cotton bent in the wind. Big drops splashed in the pools and stopped. Then a guide-post cut the threatening sky and Kit remarked: “There’s your road; I’ll get down.”
“If we can get through water-splash, I’ll go by village. Gap bank’s easier than t’other, and she’s carrying a good load.”
They ran down a hill and at the bottom the driver slackened speed, for an angry flood swept the hollow. At one side a white turmoil and a broken rail marked the narrow footbridge.
“You’ll not get across and if I tried’t I reckon car would stall,” the farmer remarked. “Mireside brig’s not far from Whinnyates. We’ll go by Birkfell.”
He turned the car, and when they climbed the hill rushy fields and wet moors melted in the rain. The car had not a hood, but the driver pulled out a tarpaulin, and crouching behind the battered sheet, they fronted the deluge. Water streamed from the glass and leaped about the wheels. Rivulets cut the mossy bank and one could not see two hundred yards. Kit, however, knew the north, and at Netherdale floods in summer are not remarkable.