Bending over her work she withdrew her hook and started to unravel the chain she was making.
"Yes," Betty went on coldly. "Nine months since I had a letter. But I've heard indirectly."
Her uncle sat up.
"You never told me," he said uneasily.
The girl's indifference was not without its effect on him. She never talked of Jim Truscott now. And somehow the subject was rarely broached by any of them. Truscott had nominally gone away for two or three years, but they were already in the fifth year since his departure, and there was as yet no word of his returning. Secretly her uncle was rather pleased at her silence on the subject. He augured well from it. He did not think there was to be any heart-breaking over the matter. He had never sanctioned any engagement between them, but he had been prepared to do so if the boy turned up under satisfactory conditions. Now he felt that it was time to take action in the matter. Betty was nearly twenty-seven, and—well, he did not want her to spend her life waiting for a man who showed no sign of returning.
"I didn't see the necessity," she said quietly. "I heard of him through Dave."
The parson swung round on the master of the mills. His keen face was alert with the deepest interest.
"You, Dave?" he exclaimed.
The lumberman stirred uneasily, and Mary Chepstow let her work lie idle in her lap.
"Dawson—my foreman, you know—got a letter from Mansell. You remember Mansell? He acted as Jim's foreman at his mill. A fine sawyer, Mansell——"