"I know; he is engaged to Miss Mary. What does that matter? I'm not keeping company with him," said Lily. "If you think I would take another girl's leavings—if she was a princess!—I would scorn it. And I don't think of the like of him. They come and they go, it don't matter to me. What have I got to do with the gentlemen? A nod or a smile out of civility, but no more."
"That is quite right, Lily," cried Roger, radiant. He came a step nearer and took her hand softly. "But you don't mean that for me?"
"Why shouldn't I mean it for you?" she cried, throwing off his hand. "But there's some one coming," she added, with a little shriek, and fled within the shelter of the door.
Roger, after lingering for a minute in hope of her return, was about to turn disconsolately away, when she suddenly appeared again, between the half-opened door and the wall, and pulling out with one finger a piece of velvet round her neck, showed him his little locket suspended to it. "There!" she cried, and suddenly shut in his face and bolted the garden door.
From which he limped home, tantalised yet happy, thinking of his possible rivals no more.
CHAPTER VI.
Elizabeth Murray was very busy about her poultry all the height of the summer. She had so many broods of chickens to look after that she scarcely knew how to turn. With all her ordinary work to do, these extra cares filled up her time so that the day was not long enough for its occupations. Dick was very helpful and handy, and they laboured together without grudging, with that unfailing and unvarying industry which those exercise who know that all the fruit of their labours will be their own. No other man or woman drudges with such patience as the little landholders, who have no master over them, and nobody to share their gains; and in many cases no other class live so sordid and miserable a life. Elizabeth and her boy laboured day and night, and never found it too much. She went to the market Saturday after Saturday, and worked all the week through among the chickens and the cows. It never occurred to her even to think that she was getting near the end of that platform of middle age on which most of the more serious work of life is done, or that by-and-by rest might be a necessity; nor did she think her life so hard, as many a poor worker, not doing half so much, has done. She was busy in the poultry-yard in the evening of one of those long summer days, which her eldest son, though she did not know it, was spending so near. At that season there are always chickens in a delicate state of health to be looked after. Two were lying already in a warm basket close to the fire, which was warm enough to singe their down off—and the hospital was likely to be larger before night. The sky was all ablaze with the sunset, if she had ever thought of the sunset. Sometimes, indeed, she would raise her head, and look round her for a moment, seeing all the glories that filled the silent sky and air, but taking no special notice, except to say to herself that this splendid weather was going to last. "Good for the chickens and a' living things," Elizabeth said to herself. But she heard her boy's step coming sturdily up the hill (for Dick had been absent since the morning) long before he was in sight. This was of more interest to her than all the sunsets; and yet, when she paused and looked down for him, what a sight was spread before her! all coolness and greenness and shadow above, the light fading out, the colour departing from the green turf and tiny fields, from everything except the beck with its chain of little pools, which reflected heaven in all its glory. Overhead the rosy clouds were hanging still, brilliant with every tint that reflection can give; while spread out before her lay a wonderful panorama—the broken ground of the braes, close at hand, for a foreground, and beyond them, between the openings of the hills, whose great shoulders shut in the view on either side—far beyond them, yet claiming the attention by its blaze of radiance—the water, far away shining like a sheet of gold in the sun. To look down from this shadowy, cloudy place, already almost dark in the early failing shadows, and see that burnished shield throwing back the light, and all the canopy overhead brilliant with crimson and purple, was a wonderful sight.
Dick came up with a sturdy resounding step, but not quickly. Sometimes he would become inaudible, as he crossed "a boggy bit," or took a devious way, crushing the fragrant bog-myrtles beneath his feet. When he arrived at last, he found Elizabeth, with a clean apron on, waiting his arrival for supper. Everything was ready for him. The chickens in their flannel infirmary chirped feebly now and then by the fire. The cat, curious, with a growing interest in the chirpings, purred about, knowing she dared not approach. The old collie, not interested at all, but tolerant, lay, though it was hot, and he felt it so, in front of the fire, which threw a reflected tinge of redness upon his shabby black coat.
"I have brought you a letter," Dick said; he did not add who was the writer, but handed it over quickly. It had been lying in the window of the toll-house for two long days, and Elizabeth gave a little cry when she saw the writing. She forgot the supper and Dick's fatigue, and everything but her eldest son, who wrote so seldom. A letter from Abel! there had not been one for—Elizabeth well knew how long. Had not she counted the months and the days? But even to herself she pretended not to know; and the sight of it thrilled her through and through; a flush of sudden colour came to her face, and the water to her eyes. When such an unusual thing as a letter came to Overbeck, it was common that he or she who received it should run it over first, thus getting the cream of novelty and sweetness—then read it aloud. Elizabeth did the first—she read it, devouring the lines: but her countenance changed as she went on, and when she had ended she put it down with some irritation upon the table, and proceeded at once to give Dick his supper. "If it's needful that he should write seldom, he might be pleasant when he writes," she said, with a spasm of disappointment and offence choking her voice.
"Is it Abel, mother; and what does he say?"