On the night when the midsummer full moon gradually emerged from the partial eclipse caused by the smokes of Sheffield, and shone full on the hill-sides to the west, two women were sitting near a spring which had rarely, till lately, failed to bless the stony region in which it was wont to flow. They came to watch for any gush or drip which might betoken the fall of showers somewhere among the hills; and patient would their watch have appeared to an observer. The one sat on the stone fence which separated the road from a field of drooping oats, and never moved, except to cast a frightened look around her when an unseasonable bleat proceeded from the restless ewes on the moor, or the distant foundry clock was heard to strike. Her companion sat, also in silence, on the edge of the dry cistern where her pitcher rested, and kept her eyes fixed on the fitful lights of the foundry from whose neighbourhood she had come.
“I have been thinking, Mary,” said Mrs. Kay, leaving her seat on the wall, and speaking in a low voice to her sister-in-law,—“I have been thinking that my husband may, perhaps, come round for us when his hours are up at the foundry, instead of going straight home. I wish he may; for I declare I don’t like being out in this way, all by ourselves.”
Mary made no answer.
“It is all so still and unnatural here. There’s the foundry at work, to be sure; but to see the tilting-mill standing, all black and quiet, is what I never met with before. We may see it for some time to come, though; for there seems little chance of a sufficient fall to touch the wheel at present. Do you think there is, Mary?”
Mary shook her head; and Mrs. Kay, having examined the spring with eye and ear, stole back to her former seat.
After looking into the field behind her for some time, she came again to say,—
“My husband talks about the crops, and the harvest being at hand, and so on; but I do not see what sort of a harvest it is to be, unless we have rain directly. What a poor-looking oat-field that is behind the wall! and there are none any better on these high grounds, as far as I can see.”
“There would be some chance for the low grounds, if the springs would flow,” answered Mary.
“Why, yes. My husband was telling me that there is a corner left of one of Anderson’s meadows down below, where the grass is as fresh and sweet as if there had been forty-eight hours’ rain. It was but a corner; but there was one of the little Andersons, and his sister, raking up the grass after the mower, and piling their garden barrow with it, to give to their white pony. Even Anderson’s beasts have been foddered, as if it was winter, for this fortnight past.”
Mary nodded, and her sister proceeded.