“And if——”
“Don’t say so, Mr. Brotherton, please! Don’t think so even. Do you imagine if he had been —— that mother would not know? If I could only go abroad I know I should find him. Here is old Isaac Oliver, old Uncle Henry’s man. He will let you see the place; and if he is cross you will not mind? He has been here so long that he thinks it is his own.”
They were walking along the edge of a field of corn, on a little footpath so narrow that here and there they had to walk singly. The wind, which swept the tall rustling crop in waves like breath coming and going, blew the pale yellow heads against them as they went along in pleasant contact with this wealth and freshness of nature. The corn was still pale in tint, ripening slowly under the northern sun, with a glimmer of red poppies under the surface like the woven under-ground of some rich Indian stuff. As Lydia spoke, an old man became visible between the corn and the hedgerow, pushing his stooping shoulders along before him with a sidelong movement like a crab. His head was bent to one side, his footsteps shuffling. Ten years had told upon Isaac. He did not take off his hat when he saw Liddy approaching, such a ceremonial being scarcely necessary to the familiar intercourse of the country, but he nodded amiably, and made signs of welcome with his hand. As, however, the path widened a little just at that moment, and young Brotherton, making a quicker step, appeared suddenly at Lydia’s side, Isaac, who had not seen him before, was greatly startled. He stopped short in his crab-like course to stare at the new comer. He fell back a step or two and screwed his stooping head aloft in a sidelong attitude. Then he gave vent to a shrill, prolonged “E-eh!” which penetrated the air like a skewer. “So he’s coomed back,” the old man said.
“Who has come back?” said Lydia, startled and eager.
“Lord, Master, give us a grip o’ your hand. You’re no Master Harry now, you’re master’s sel’. T’ ould Master left it all to ye, as I said he would if you’d let him be; but you never would listen, nor think on——” When he had got so far, old Isaac paused. His head had sunk a little from its first energy of motion, but he kept one eye screwed up and shining, and his mouth twisted upward at one corner. Here, however, he paused, and a cloud came over his face. “Miss Liddy,” he said, reproachfully, “you might have tellt me it wasn’t him.”
“Who did you think it was, Isaac? It is Mr. Brotherton, a——distant cousin. Did you think——? Oh, tell me, is he like, is he like——?”
The old man recovered himself gradually. He gave a grin which seemed to twist upwards from his mouth to his little twinkling eyes.
“Not a feature in his face,” he said, with a growl of angry laughter, “not a bit, no more nor I’m like. I’m just an old fool. I take anyone for him. Ne’er a soul comes down t’ Fells but I say, it’s him, as if he was coming from t’ skies. A fine joke that; and him t’ prodigal son, a good joke; to look for him from t’ skies! He should come from t’ other place, Miss Liddy, up from t’ ground.”
“But he was no prodigal,” said Liddy, indignantly. “He did not go away for any harm, Isaac, you know that!”
“I know a’ about it, a’ about it,” said the old man. “Step forward, Sir, into the light. If you keep there dangling behind her—Lord! but I’ll think it’s you after a’.”