“Yet when I looked in I thought you seemed—almost frightened.”
“I am afeared,” she returned in a low voice, “but I’m not afeard o’ him—I’m afeared o’ what he’ll bring when he cooms. And yet, God knows, I’ll be fain to—”
“What do you mean?”
“Nay, never mind. Maybe ’tis foolish talk. . . . The rain has gived ower now, ma’am, and yo’d happen do well to mak’ a start.”
There was no disputing the advisability of this course, and I took my leave, promising to come and see the old woman again on my next visit to the neighbourhood.
Two years passed, however, before I again found myself in that part of the world, and even then I had been staying at Saltleigh for a week or two before I could make time to betake myself to the cottage on the lonely dunes. I walked along the shore as I had done on that former occasion, and, as I drew near, my eyes instinctively sought the little window which had played so important a part in the old woman’s story, and I stared in surprise at its altered aspect. The ledge behind the casement hitherto left blank—no doubt because Molly would tolerate no intervening objects between her and the panes on which her eyes loved to linger—was now closely packed with flower pots; gay scarlet geraniums pressing forward to the light. I quickened my steps, but before I could reach the house a yet more astonishing sight appeared amid the clusters of bloom; neither more or less than the laughing face of a little child, which peered curiously out at me, and was by-and-by supplemented by two fat, dimpled hands, which hammered gleefully upon the glass.
Full of forebodings I knocked at the cottage door, which was presently opened by a tall young woman with a baby in her arms.
“I came to see Molly Davis,” I said hesitatingly. “Is she—is she—”
“Eh, ma’am, hoo’s dead,” returned the young woman, answering my wistful look rather than the unfinished sentence. “Hoo deed nigh upon a year ago—last autumn it wur. Poor soul, hoo was glad to go, I doubt, for hoo was but ’onely here.”
“Do you know—what she died of? Was she long ill?”