'Still, it seems a pity,' he said, 'don't it now, when things are so comfortable, as I've been telling you?'
Elfrida did not even hear him, for Davy, with the air of a king, was allowing her to carry him up the steep bank home to supper.
One day when I was there, the farmer brought down Joe to the ferry, with a kind of hope that the sight of Davy's little motherless rival might touch Elfrida's heart.
The visit did not turn out well. Davy made a bad beginning by knocking his guest down, without the smallest provocation except that he did not like him. Thereafter Joe's shrill cries of fear and anger could by no manner of means be hushed. He stood clasping his big daddy's leg with gasping sobs, a weak, pale-faced, poor-spirited little mortal. 'So-ho, Joe, quiet,' his father kept on saying, patting and smoothing him down, rather as if he had been a cart-horse.
Elfrida, on her side, was holding back Davy, trying to scold him, and make him beg Joe's pardon; but there he stood, nothing daunted, like a prince, Elfrida said, his head thrown back, his eyes sparkling, and one small fist doubled, ready as soon as he was released for another hit at poor terror-stricken Joe.
It did not do. Joe was taken home to the hills, without having greatly aided his father's cause, and the farmer was fain to fall back again upon patience as his best helper after all.
And indeed so were we. I had to go back to Wyncliffe that evening with the old answer, 'No, Hildred, no news yet.'
'I am so tired, so tired of waiting,' she said wearily.
She was standing on the hearth-stone, in the red light of the fire. The rest of the room was dark, for the early dusk of winter had gathered outside. Only the glow from the burning embers fell on her bent face and clasped hands.
Her words sounded all the more dreary that they were spoken in a lowered tone, for Granny, who of late had ceased to take much notice of anything, sat as usual, half asleep, in the chimney-corner.