"Do you mean to say you don't believe what I say?" cried Mrs. Lane indignantly. "Do you mean to tell me I'm telling an untruth? Well, Mrs. Barnes, if you won't speak to my husband, and won't believe me, perhaps you'll ask your Mona! I daresay she can tell you how the faggots got scattered. She was out there, I saw her from——"
"That's right! Try and put it off on the poor child! Do you expect me to believe that my Mona would have left those faggots——"
"Ask her, that's all," said Mrs. Lane, meaningly. "And now I've done. I ain't going to have anything more to say. You're too vi'lent and onreasonable, Mrs. Barnes, and I'll trouble you not to address me again till you've 'pologised."
Granny laughed, a short sarcastic laugh. "'Pologise!" she cried shrilly, "and me in the right too! No, not if I lived next door to you for fifty years, I wouldn't 'pologise. When you've 'pologised to me, Mrs. Lane, I'll begin to think about speaking to you again."
Mona, standing shivering by the window, listened to it all with a sick feeling of shame and dismay. "Oh, why does granny say such dreadful things! Oh, I wish I'd spoken out at once! Now, when granny asks me, I shall have to tell her, and oh," miserably, "won't she be angry?"
But Mona escaped that ordeal. Her grandmother did not mention the subject, for one reason; she felt too unwell; an outburst of anger always made her ill; and for another, she was already ashamed of herself and of what she had said. Altogether, she was so uncomfortable about the whole matter, and so ashamed, and vexed, she wanted to try to forget all about it.
CHAPTER II.
John Darbie and his one-horse van journeyed from Milbrook to Seacombe every Tuesday and Friday, passing Mrs. Barnes' cottage on their way; and on Wednesdays and Saturdays he journeyed home again. The two places were only ten miles apart, but, as John's horse 'Lion' never travelled faster than three miles an hour, and frequent stops had to be made to pick up passengers and luggage, and put down other passengers and other luggage, the journey was seldom accomplished in less than six hours.
The day that Mona travelled to Seacombe the journey took longer than usual, for they had to stop at Barnes Gate—an old turnpike—to pick up a couple of young pigs, which were to be brought by a farm boy to meet them there; and as the pigs refused to be picked up, and were determined to race back to their home, it took John and the farmer's boy, and some of the passengers, quite a long time to persuade them that their fate lay in another direction.