“But nearly all our things are in,” she remonstrated. “There’s as good as nothing left here.”
“I tell ye we don’t go in afore to-morrow,” said Hill, giving the table a thump. “Can’t ye be satisfied with that?”
He went off to his work. Mrs. Hill, accepting the change as inevitable, resigned herself, and borrowed a saucepan to cook the potatoes for dinner. She might have spared herself the trouble; her husband did not come in for any. He bought a penny loaf and some cheese, and made his dinner of it inside our home barn, Molly giving him some beer. He had done it before when very busy: but the work he was about that day was in no such hurry, and he might have left it if he would.
“Who is to sleep in the house to-night?” his wife asked him when he got home to tea.
“I shall,” said Hill. “I won’t be beholden to nobody.”
Mrs. Hill, remembering the experience of the past night, quaked a little at finding she should have to sleep in the old place alone, devoutly praying there might be no recurrence of the dream that had thrown her into such mortal terror. She and Davy were just alike—frightened at their own shadows in the dark. When Hill was safe off, she hurried into bed, and kept her head under the clothes.
Hill came back betimes in the morning; and they moved in at once; old Coney’s groom, who happened to be out with the dog-cart, offering to drive Mrs. Hill. Though her ankle was better and the distance short, she could hardly have walked. Instead of finding the house in order, as she expected, it was all sixes and sevens; the things lying about all over it.
Towards evening, Hannah got me to call at Willow Brook and say she’d go there in the morning for an hour or two, to help put things in order—the mistress had said she might do so. The fact was, Hannah was burning for a gossip, she and Hill’s wife being choice friends. It was almost dark; the front room looked tolerably straight, and Mrs. Hill sat by the fire, resting her foot and looking out at the window, the shutters not yet closed.
“I’d be very thankful for her to come, Master Johnny,” she said eagerly, hardly letting me finish. “There’s a great deal to do; and, besides that, it is so lonesome here. I never had such a feeling in all my life; and I have gone into strange homes before this.”