“You wouldn’t come somewhere else—not till I’m eighty!”
“Don’t be absurd! Anyhow you’ll look beautiful with a white beard.”
“Why not get him a minder with the money? Then we could go to Australia together.”
“Leave him to a stranger! He’d die. But so long as the farm was in England, it wouldn’t be so bad, even if I couldn’t come just yet.”
He did not answer, and as they walked on silently, her daydreams resurged, her nipped buds began bursting into wonderful flower. They parted at her door without further reference to money questions, but her face was brimming with happiness as the pot with guineas.
In that rosy mood—when her grandfather, nid-nodding over the hearth, roused at her return—she could not refrain from pouring out her teapot on the table, and changing his grumbles at her absence into squeaks of delight. She meant to pour out her story too, but he cut her short.
“That’s mine!” he cried, exultant. “That’s the gold Sidrach brought me!”
“No, no, Gran’fer. That comes from——!”
“But there’s the wery spade guineas!” He dabbled his claws in the coins.
“Oh, is that what they are? But there’s heads of Victoria, too.”