To her intense relief she heard the sound of a chair being pushed back over the flagged floor within, and her mother’s well-known step slowly cross the little kitchen.
“Martha! be it you, my dear?” But she did not open the door, and when Martha eagerly tried the latch she found that it did not yield.
“Mother, mother,” she cried in an agony of fear, “oh, mother, what is it? Why don’t ye let I in?”
“I can’t, my dear,” came the tremulous voice from within. “No, don’t ax it of I. I dursen’t, Martha! There, I mid do ’ee a mischief.”
“Mother, what be talkin’ on?” Martha was beginning incredulously, when her small son, impatient of the delay, fairly drowned her voice with shrill clamour for admittance, and vigorous kicking of his little hobnailed boots at the panels of the door. Martha snatched him up and impatiently clapped her hand over the protesting mouth. In the momentary pause that ensued she heard her mother weeping.
“Be that Ally? Oh, my blessed lamb! Oh, dear heart! Oh, oh!” Then in a louder key came the words broken by sobs: “Take en away, Martha, do—take en away, lovey! Somethin’ bad might happen else!”
Here Ally, wrenching himself free, burst into a roar of indignation, and his mother, popping him down on the ground, threw herself upon the door, and, exerting all her strength, succeeded in bursting it open.
With a wail Ann shrank away from her into the farthest corner of the room, hiding her face against the wall.
“Don’t ye come a-nigh me, Martha, don’t ye—don’t ye! And take the blessed child away! Take him away this minute!”
“I’ll do nothin’ o’ the kind,” returned Martha vehemently. “Be you gone crazy, mother? Whatever is the matter?”