'Well, if you arst me,' she said hastily, 'of course we think as it's only nateral you should leave it with Isaac an me, as is your own kith and kin. But we wasn't goin to say nothin; we didn't want to be pushin of ourselves forward.'
John rose to his feet. He was in his shirt-sleeves, which were rolled up. He pulled them down, put on his coat, an air of crisis on his fat face.
'Where 'ud you put it?' he said.
'Yer know that cupboard by the top of the stairs? It 'ud stand there easy. And the cupboard's got a good lock to it; but we'd 'ave it seen to, to make sure.'
She looked up at him eagerly. She longed to feel herself trusted and important. Her self-love was too often mortified in these respects.
John fumbled round his neck for the bit of black cord on which he kept two keys—the key of his room while he was away, and the key of the box itself.
'Well, let's get done with it,' he said. 'I'm off to-morrer mornin, six o'clock. You go and get Isaac to come down.'
'I'll run,' said Bessie, catching up her shawl and throwing it over her head. 'He wor just finishin his tea.'
And she whirled out of the cottage, running up the steep road behind it as fast as she could. John was vaguely displeased by her excitement; but the die was cast. He went to make his arrangements.
Bessie ran till she was out of breath. When she reached her own house, a cottage in a side lane above the Bolderfields' cottage and overlooking it from the back, she found her husband sitting with his pipe at the open door and reading his newspaper. Three out of her own four children were playing in the lane, otherwise there was no one about.