“Your schoolmistress has known trouble,” observed Mrs. Temperley. “Had she no one, no sister, no friend, during all this time that she could turn to for help or counsel?”
“Not as I knows of,” Dodge replied.
There was a long pause, during which the stillness seemed to weigh upon the air, as if the pressure of Fate were hanging there with ruthless immobility.
“She ain’t got no more to suffer now,” Dodge remarked, nodding with an aspect of half apology towards the grave. “They sleeps soft as sleeps here.”
“Good heavens, I hope so!” Mrs. Temperley exclaimed.
The grave had made considerable progress before she descended from the stile and prepared to take her homeward way. On leaving, she made Dodge come with her to the gate, and point out the red-roofed cottage covered with monthly roses and flaming creeper, where the schoolmistress had passed so many years, and where she now lay with her work and her days all over, in the tiny upper room, at whose latticed window the sun used to wake her on summer mornings, or the winter rain pattered dreary prophecies of the tears that she would one day shed.
CHAPTER XVII.
“IF you please, ma’am, the cook says as the meat hasn’t come for lunch, and what is she to do?”
“Without,” replied Mrs. Temperley automatically.