[CHAPTER IV.]
WAITING FOR BELL
The fire threw its glow on Mrs. Bell's kitchen—kitchen and sitting-room combined—lighting up the strip of bright carpet before the fender and the red-tiled floor; playing on the plates and dishes on the dresser, and on the blue hyacinth glasses in the window, now closed in by the outer shutters. Stout Mrs. Bell sat by the round table in her white apron and mob-cap, plying her knitting-needles. On the other side the hearth sat a neighbour, one Nancy Tomson, a tall, thin Cornish woman in a check apron, with projecting teeth and a high nose, who had come in for a chat. On the table waited the supper of bread-and-cheese; and a candle stood ready for lighting.
The clock struck nine. Mrs. Bell looked up as though the sound half startled her.
"Who'd heve thought it!" cried the visitor, whose chatter had been going incessantly for the last hour, causing the time to pass quickly. "Be they clock too fast, Dame Bell?"
"No," said the dame. "It's right by the church."
"Well, I'd never heve said it were nine. Your folks es late. I wonder where they be that they don't come hoam."
"No need to wonder," returned Mrs. Bell, in sharp tones, meant for the absentees. "Rosaline's staying with poor Granny Sandon, who seems to have nobody else to stay with her. As to Bell, he is off again to the Golden Shaft."
"You said he had comed in."
"He did come in: and I thought he had come in for good. But he didn't stay a minute; he must needs tramp out again. And he was further gone, Nancy Tomson, than I've seen him these three years."