“Never mind, you must be awake for an hour or so,” said Mrs. Tarnley, entering the den without more ceremony.
Tom didn’t mind Mrs. Tarnley, nor Mrs. Tarnley Tom, a rush. She set the candle on the tiled floor. Tom was sitting in his shirt on the side of his “settlebed,” with his hands on his knees.
“Ye must get on your things, Tom, and if ever you stirred yourself, be alive now. The master’s a-comin’, and may be here, across Cressley Common in half an hour, or might be in five minutes, and ye must go out a bit and meet him, and—are ye awake?”
“Starin’. Go on.”
“Ye’ll tell him just this, the big woman as lives at Hoxton——”
“Hoxton! Well?”
“That Master Harry has all the trouble wi’, has come here, angry, in search of Master Harry, mind, and is in the bedroom over the hall-door. Will ye mind all that now?”
“Ay,” said Tom, and repeated it.
“Well, he’ll know better whether it’s best for him to come on or turn back. But if come on he will, let him come in at the kitchen door, mind, and you go that way, too, and he’ll find neither bolt nor bar, but open doors, and nothing but the latch between him and the kitchen, and me sitting by the fire; but don’t you clap a door, nor tread heavy, but remember there’s a sharp pair of ears that ’d hear a cricket through the three walls of Carwell Grange.”
She took up the candle, and herself listened for a moment at the door, and again turned her earnest and sinister face on Tom.