“You are going to see my old master and mistress, sir,” she burst forth, dashing some rebellious moisture from her eyes. “Mr. Thomas, do you recollect it?—my poor mistress sat here in this porch the very day she died.”
“I remember it well, Margery. I am dying quietly, thank God, as my mother died.”
“And what a blessing it is when folks can die quietly, with their conscience and all about ’em at peace!” ejaculated Margery. “I wonder how Mr. George would have took it, if he’d been called instead of you, sir?”
There was considerable acidity, not to say sarcasm, in the remark; perhaps not altogether suited to the scene and interview. Good Thomas Godolphin would not see it or appear to notice it. He took Margery’s hands in his.
“I never thought once that I should die leaving you in debt, Margery,” he said, his earnest tone bearing its own emotion. “It was always my intention to bequeath you an annuity that would have kept you from want in your old age. But it has been decreed otherwise; and it is of no use to speak of what might have been. Miss Janet will refund to you by degrees what you have lost in the Bank; and so long as you live you will be welcome to a home with her. She has not much, but——”
“Now never fash yourself about me, Mr. Thomas,” interrupted Margery. “I shall do well, I dare say; I’m young enough yet for work, I hope; I shan’t starve. Ah, this world’s nothing but a pack o’ troubles,” she added, with a loud sigh. “It has brought its share to you, sir.”
“I am on the threshold of a better, Margery,” was his quiet answer; “one where troubles cannot enter.”
Margery sat for some time on the bench, talking to him. At length she rose to depart, declining the invitation to enter the house or to see the ladies, and Thomas said to her his last farewell.
“My late missis, I remember, looked once or twice during her illness as grey as he does,” she cogitated within herself as she went along. “But it strikes me that with him it’s death. I’ve a great mind to ask old Snow what he thinks. If it is so, Mr. George ought to be telegraphed for; they are brothers, after all.”
Margery’s way led her past the turning to the railway station. A train was just in. She cast an eye on the passengers coming from it, and in one of them she saw her master, Mr. George Godolphin.