But she spoke hesitatingly, as though some impediment might lie in the way: and she looked round in a dreamy manner on the open country, all so white and dreary in the moonlight.
“Yes, there’s no other place—of course it must be the farm,” she added. “Perhaps you can bring her between you. But I’ll go on and speak to my father first.”
It was easy for one to carry her, she was so thin and light. John Drench lifted her and they all went off: leaving me and Leek to finish up in the church, and put out the candles.
William Page was sitting in his favourite place, the wide chimney-corner of the kitchen, quietly smoking his pipe, when his daughter broke in upon him with the strange news. Just in the same way that, a year before, she had broken in upon him with that other news—that a gentleman had arrived, uninvited, on a visit to the farm. This news was more startling than that.
“Are they bringing her home?—how long will they be?” cried the old man with feverish eagerness, as he let fall his long churchwarden pipe, and broke it. “Abigail, will they be long?”
“Father, I want to say something: I came on to say it,” returned Miss Page, and she was trembling too. “I don’t like her face: it is wan, and thin, and full of suffering: but there’s a look in it that—that seems to tell of shame.”
“To tell of what?” he asked, not catching the word.
“May Heaven forgive me if I misjudge her! The fear crossed me, as I saw her lying there, that her life may not have been innocent since she left us: why else should she come back in this most strange way? Must we take her in all the same, father?”
“Take her in!” he repeated in amazement. “Yes. What are you thinking of, child, to ask it?”
“It’s the home of myself and Susan, father: it has been always an honest one in the sight of the neighbours. Maybe, they’ll be hard upon us for receiving her into it.”