"I'm going to walk over, across the ice, to the Bend, to-morrow," said Milly.
"Walk!" her husband protested. "What do you walk for? It's cold as Greenland on the ice, and, besides, they were cutting at the pool by the Bend; you don't want to go that way, Milly. Take the stage round."
Mrs. Dilworth crumbled a piece of bread with shaking fingers, and said nothing.
"What time are you going, mother?" inquired Edwin.
"In the afternoon, about four."
"Why, you went there only two days ago," Edwin said, irritably. "I saw you on the back road carting a big bundle."
"It would have been more to the point if you'd done the carting for your mother," Tom Dilworth said, sharply.
His wife paled suddenly at that word about a bundle, but the subject was not pursued. Edwin said, grumbling, that he didn't see what possessed his mother to choose such an hour. "It's too dark for a lady to be out," Edwin protested.
"Too dark for a—grandmother!" his father said. "Don't you criticise your mother, young man." And then he added: "Look out for the places where the men were cutting, Milly. It hasn't frozen over yet."
And Mrs. Dilworth said, after a pause, "I know."