“But what are you going to do with it?” she inquired in distress.
“That’s for Annie.”
“Mr. Skindle’s mother! But he’s rich as rich.”
“He don’t never buy her nawthen. He come here and told me sow out of his own mouth, the hunks. Oi had to pay for her packet o’ hairpins.”
“Well, anyhow she’ll have her Christmas dinner, and that’s more than you’re sure of,” she risked threatening.
“You’ve got the telescope, hain’t ye?” he urged uneasily.
“I can’t sell that. That’s for remembrance.”
“Ye can remember him without a telescope. And ef he had his faults, ’tain’t for you to remember ’em, seein’ as ye’d never a-bin here at all ef he’d done his duty by Emma and King Gearge. But Oi reckon he couldn’t see everythink with that glass eye, and Oi ought to ha’ carried silks and brandy myself ’stead o’ parcels and culch. Did, Oi’d a-got a stockin’ like Sidrach’s and not had to deny myself bite and sup for your sake.” And he hobbled stairwards, the post-office order clutched in his skeleton claw. “Do ye write to Dap’s buoy-oy and thank him for payin’ his dues, and say as Oi hope he won’t put no fooleries on his father’s stone, and he’d best copy what Oi had put on your father’s and mother’s.”
Jinny duly wrote, if not in these terms. But when the telescope came, she felt anything but thankful. For, welcome as it was in itself, it came by the coach. She had been too distraught to foresee this, though she recognized that it was the natural way. And apart from the sting to her own pride, it agitated her grandfather profoundly. He had been nodding at the hearth, but the clamour of the coach aroused him, and ere she could get to the door he had sprung up with an oath.
“Don’t let him over my doorstep!” he cried, pursuing her. “He’s got to come in on his hands and knees.” He jostled her aside and seized the bolt, but his hand trembled so, he could not shoot it.