Her eyes wandered round the unfamiliar room. “Where be,” she was beginning again, when Phoebe adroitly interrupted her.
“This be father’s chair, as you do say, mother, an’ this be his week to be sure. There you can talk to en so comfortable as can be.”
Lizzie glanced round again with a deep sigh.
John Caines, Phoebe’s husband, worked in the Branston brewery, and they lived in consequence in the town. Theirs was a six-roomed semi-detached house with a dusty little yard in the rear, and a tiny grass-plot in front, on which Phoebe sometimes spread out linen to dry. It was situated near the station, and many vehicles passed that way, creating much dust, and making a considerable amount of noise.
Phoebe presently commented on this fact to her bewildered mother.
“’Tis nice an’ cheerful to be so near the road, bain’t it?” she remarked pleasantly, tilting up as she spoke a corner of the muslin blind. “Ye can look out, look-see. That’s the ’bus from the Crown, an’ there’s Sibley’s cart, and look, look—there’s a motor.”
The children all rushed to the window to investigate this wonder, Isaac pausing midway to whoop violently. Lizzie bent a vacant gaze upon the window, and then drew back into her corner.
“’Tis awful lwonesome here,” she said, “terr’ble lwonesome—there, that noise an’ the dust an’ all; it do fair make my head go round.”
Phoebe burst out laughing:—
“Dear, to be sure, that’s a queer notion! How can ye be lwonesome wi’ so many folks about?”