Now Steve burst out laughing and sent the whip whizzing once or twice through the air, notwithstanding that the horse was doing its best.
When we drove along over the heights, the threatening storm had dispersed entirely; the setting sun shone with a faint golden gleam over the wide landscape, over wood and meadows; and a cool breeze blew in our faces.
A bright tear lay on my mother's pale cheeks.
As, silent and tired, we drove through our home meadows, the stars appeared in the sky. On every side, the song of the crickets purled and chirped in the grass. By the fence, where our hillside began, stood a black figure that accosted us and asked if it was we.
It was my father, who had come to meet us. My mother called him by name; her voice was weak and trembling.
Father took us indoors, without asking a question.
Not until we were in the parlour and the rushlight was burning did he ask how we had fared.
"Not badly," said Steve, "not at all badly: we have been very cheerful."
"And Tom of the Footpath: what did he say?"
"He said that, like other people, woodman's wife wouldn't live for ever, but that she has plenty of time before her, oh, plenty of time. Only you're to take care: give her lots of good air in the summer, not too much work and no excitement, good food and drink and no physic, no physic at all, he said. And then she'll get all right again."