“There’s many a fellow’d knock ye on the head for less,” replied Harry, with a very black look; “you women has a hintin’ funkin’ way wi’ ye. Ye like to ladle the drippin’ over a fellow’s legs, and say ye meant the mutton. Can’t ye speak out and say what ye mean, and get it off yer stomach, and let me know, and I’ll answer it straight like a man and a Fairfield, d—— me!”
“I’ll go wi’ ye to-morrow; and I take it that’s what ye want.”
“Well, this I’ll say. If ye suppose I’d hurt that poor baby to the value of a pin’s point, you’re a stupider and a wickeder witch than I took ye for, and I wish poor Ally could hear me, and I’d swear to her on my knees, at her dying bed, by the Creator that made me, that I’ll work for that boy as if he was my own, till I make him safe in Wyvern. And can’t ye see, woman, d—— ye, that I can have but the boy’s good in my mind when I ask ye to come over on such an errand to Twyford?”
“Well, I do suppose—I do suppose. Eight o’clock, and there’s two feet will be cold ere then, I’m afeard.”
“Don’t be a fool no more, and I forgive ye, Mildred,” said he, extending his hand; “and don’t ye mind a lick wi’ the rough side o’ my tongue—’tis a way wi’ us Fairfields—and there wasn’t many on ’em would ’a stood to let ye rile them as ye did me. And bolt yer doors, mind; and, poor Ally! I hope she may do yet, and mind ye—eight o’clock sharp.”
So Harry departed.
Mildred stood and looked after him for a time.
“There’s nothin’ ever goes right at the Grange,” she said with a short hard sigh; “nor never did, nor never will.”
And after a pause, with another sigh, she said—
“No, no; I won’t think it—I couldn’t think it—’taint in one o’ them. They might be fickle wi’ a lass, or hot tempered wi’ a man, and a bit too hard wi’ tongue or hand, but the like o’ that—I can’t believe it—never, and I wish I hadn’t a’ heard that. I’m most sure I heard the child cry in the loft there; I’m sorry I didn’t say so then. I don’t know why, and I don’t know now, what it should be no more than another, but I didn’t like it. It looked like summat hid—I can’t say. But my heart misgave me.”