Jacob took out his pipe and stared at her, and then he got up and paced about the little flagged path.
“What would happen?” she repeated sharply. “What would you advise me to do?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” returned Jacob confusedly. “I haven’t had time for to think o’ that.”
It was now Bethia’s turn to spring to her feet. “I think you are hard, and obstinate, and cruel! Yes, cruel, to try and put upon my poor mother and me! But I’ll have an end of this shilly-shally work; you shall be forced to pay, sir.”
She hastened down the path. Jacob, after delaying a moment to lay his pipe carefully in a corner of the seat, strode after her and opened the garden gate, holding it for a moment so that she could not pass through.
Bethia glanced at him. He did not look angry, but resolute; his jaw was firmly set and his eyes steady. It struck her forcibly that he had a good face—honest, open, manly—and she realised with a little pang that it was probably turned towards her for the last time in friendship.
“I’ll give you a month,” she said waveringly.
“Ye mid as well say a year,” returned Jacob. “’Twill be all the same.”
Thereupon he opened the gate and she went away.
The allotted time of grace passed very slowly, and though Bethia continued to post a little demand-note every week, no notice was taken either of her appeal or of herself.