Meanwhile Jim Barnes and Mrs Wharton sat face to face on either side of the parlour fire, gazing at each other for some time in unbroken silence. Presently the farmer spoke, pointing at the widow with his thumb, and inaugurating proceedings by heaving a deep sigh.
“I reckon ye miss the gaffer, Mrs Wharton?”
“I do indeed, Mr Barnes,” returned the widow, with an answering sigh, which made her stiff black silk creak alarmingly.
“Ah—ye can’t miss him more nor what I do my poor missus. She was a wonderful woman, Mrs Wharton.”
“She was—ah, she was. Providence seems to ha’ dealt a bit ’ard wi’ the two of us, Mr Barnes, but we munnot re-pine.”
After this there came a pause, during which the farmer scratched his head and rubbed his knees.
“My lass, Maimie, d’ye see—she’s a very good lass, but a bit giddy—she dunnot seem never to remember naught.”
“She’s but young,” said the widow tolerantly. “Our Luke—the eldest lad, he do seem to gi’ me a lot o’ trouble. Wants to know better nor me, and is ever and always trying to be gaffer. ‘Women don’t know naught about farmin’,’ says he to me as bold as ye please.”
“Did he?” ejaculated Jim, with a deeply scandalised air.
“Not but what,” continued the widow, half-laughingly, after a moment’s reflection; “not but what the lad have got a wonderful notion o’ farm work himself. Wonderful, he have—eh, he shapes wonderful well for a lad of his years. Mr Gradwell, now, o’ Little Upton, he was passin’ the remark to me only t’other day. Says he, ‘I never did see sech a long head as your Luke have got for sech a young chap,’ he says.”