Miss Partridge's head bent over her knitting.
"Yes," she said.
"Well," continued Mrs. Pockett, "it were thowt 'at he died middlin' weel off, but now it turns out 'at he didn't. In fact, he's left nowt, and t' mill were mortgaged, as they term it, and now they're barn to sell 'em up, lock, stock, and barril. It's a pity, 'cos t' lad's a nice young feller, and they say 'at if nobbut they could pay t' money he could work up a good trade. It's a thousand pounds 'at they want to settle matters. See yer, I hev' a bill o' t' sale i' my pocket—t' billposter gev' me it this mornin'. Ye'll notice 'at there's a nicish bit o' furniture to dispose on. But what will t' widder and t' two childer do, turned out i' that way?"
"It's very sad," said Miss Partridge; "very sad."
She laid the bill aside and began to talk of something else. But when Jane Pockett had purchased three yards of flannel and departed, she read the bill through and noted that the sale was to take place on the next day but one. And taking off her spectacles she laid them and the knitting down on the counter, and bidding Martha Mary mind the shop, she went up to her own room and, closing the door, began to walk up and down, thinking.
Forty years slipped away from Miss Partridge, and she was once more a girl of nineteen and engaged to Robert Dickinson. She remembered it all vividly—their walks, their talks, their embraces. She opened an old desk and took from it a faded photograph of a handsome lad, some equally faded ribbons, a tarnished locket—all that was left of the long-dead dream of youth. She put them back, and thought of how they had parted in anger because of a lover's quarrel. He had accused her of flirting, and she had been too proud to defend herself, and he had flung away and gone to a far-off colony, and she had remained behind—to be true to his memory all her life. And twenty years later he had come back, bringing a young wife with him, and had taken Stapleby Mill—but he and she had never met, never spoken. And now he was dead, and his widow and children were to be outcasts, beggars.
Customers who came to the little shop that evening remarked to each other on its mistress's unusually quiet mood, and hoped Miss Partridge was not going to be ill. But Miss Partridge was quite well when she came down to breakfast next morning, dressed in her best and wearing her bonnet, and she looked very determined about something.
"You'll have to mind the shop this morning, Martha Mary, for I'm going to Cornchester," she said. "Get Eliza Grimes to come and do the housework."
Once in Cornchester Miss Partridge entered the local bank—an institution which she regarded with great awe—and had a whispered consultation with the cashier, which resulted in that gentleman handing over to her ten banknotes of a hundred pounds each—the savings of a lifetime.
"Going to invest it, Miss Partridge?" said the cashier, smiling.