“There be other trains than wot run on them irons,” pronounced Mrs. Fringe sententiously, “and if you aren’t careful, one such God Almighty’s train will run over that brother of yours, sooner or later.”
Luke looked apprehensively up the long converging steel track. The gloom of the day and the ominous tone of his old gossip affected him very unpleasantly. He began to wish that there was not a deep muddy pond under the Hullaway elms.
“What on earth do you mean?” he cried, adding impatiently, “Oh damn that train!” as a cloud of smoke made itself visible in the distance.
“Only this, dearie,” said the woman picking up her basket, “only this. If you listen to me you’d sooner dig your own grave than have words with brother. Brother be not one wot can stand these fimble-fambles same as you and I. I know wot I do say, cos I was privileged, under Almighty God, to see the end of your dear mother.”
“I know—I know—” cried the young man, “but what do you mean?”
Mrs. Fringe thrust her arm through the handle of her basket and turned to meet the incoming train.
“’Twas when I lived with my dear husband down at Willow-Grove,” she said. “’Twas a stone’s throw there from where you and Jim were born. I always feared he would go, same as she went, sooner or later. He talks like her. He looks like her. He treats a person in the way she treated a person, poor moon-struck darling! ’Twas all along of your father. She couldn’t bide him along-side of her in the last days. And he knew it as well as you and I know it. But do ’ee think it made any difference to him? Not a bit, dearie! Not one little bit!”
The train had now stopped, and with various humorous observations, addressed to porters and passengers indiscriminately, Mrs. Fringe took her place in a carriage.
Heedless of being overheard, Luke addressed her through the window of the compartment. “But what about James? What were you saying about James?”
“’Tis too long a tale to tell ’ee, dearie,” murmured the woman breathlessly. “There be need now of all my blessed wits to do business for the Reverend. There, look at that!” She waved at him a crumpled piece of paper. “Beyond all thinking I’ve got to fetch him books from Slitly’s. Books, by the Lord! As if he hadn’t too many of the darned things for his poor brain already!”