Presently the little arched green door in the wall opened and a woman scuttled out, carrying a bundle suspiciously.
"Who be that? Law! How 'ee did frighten me!" she panted a little with nervousness; perhaps that bundle had no right to be in her arms. "Be it you, Abram Lestwick?" she asked, peering into the darkness.
"Aye!" he said briefly. "It be me all right, Mother Colley. What be 'ee doing here to-night?"
"'Tis the young new Squire, the old man's son, come home wi' his lady wife. I see her for a minute, Abram, and a prettier creature I never set eyes on, so kind and smiling her looks, too, and so mighty fond they du seem to be of one another, arm in arm they was walking. 'Father,' he were saying when I see him, 'Father have done wonders here, Kathleen! You did ought to have seen the place no more than four months ago. Father have worked wonderful, terribul hard for we!' he said."
"Ah!" said Abram.
"Yes," said Mrs. Colley, nodding her head, "and she wonderful sweet and dainty her looked, I tell 'ee, Abram—'Wonderful kind and good he be, Allan,' she says. And, Abram, why don't 'ee ever come in for a kindly cup o' tea to our cottage? My maid 'Lizbeth continooally du ask me! A clever maid her be wi' her fingers and a worker she, not like someone as I could name, some as bain't too right in their mind!"
"Who?"
"I mention no names, Abram, only I say there be a kindly welcome and a cup set for 'ee whenever 'ee do take the fancy and now I must be getting along. A wonderful place they hev made o' it, and oh! the money it hev cost! It fair sets me wondering how there ever du be so much money in the world!"
"And if," Abram thought, "all the money in the world were mine, I would lay it at Betty's feet!" So he went on his way, for the man who rises at four in the morning must to bed betimes.
* * * * *