"Mother's got a letter. It's about grandmother. She's ill, going to die maybe, for she wants mother to go to see her to-day." Dropping his voice to a whisper, he added, "She's sent some money, mother says, but it's only a piece of paper, and you're to get off work, if you can, and come home with me."
It was not likely that so steady a man as Adam Livesey would have any difficulty in getting permission to go back with his boy. It was well known that he never willingly lost an hour's wages, so the foreman at once said, "Go back with the lad by all means;" and Adam, without waiting to finish his breakfast, tied up the remains, slipped on his jacket, and started homeward.
He found his wife excited and tearful. "See," she said, "mother has sent this. A whole five-pound note. She is very ill, and I am to make haste, if I want to see her alive. Ann has written the letter. I am to take baby with me, but how I am to leave the rest of you, I don't know. Maggie is too little to manage by herself, and I've never been used to have anybody in, except when there was a new baby to look after. What am I to do, Adam?"
Mrs. Livesey rarely appealed to her husband, being usually of opinion that she was quite able to manage her household affairs without masculine advice or interference.
"You mind your own business, and I'll mind mine," was a very favourite mode of expression with her.
But the present difficulty, and Adam's mode of dealing with it, showed her that she might have had a worse counsellor than her usually quiet husband.
Adam thought for a minute, then said, "There's a nice steady young woman that comes to Rutherford's sometimes. She brings dinner for Richard Evans when he doesn't go home. Not always, but now and then. I've heard him say she's his niece, and a very good girl. She helps his wife on washing days, when she has nowhere else particular to go."
Richard Evans was the elderly workman who has already been mentioned, and Mrs. Livesey at once declared that if he spoke well of a girl, she would be the right sort. So Adam went to see if her help would be available, and Mrs. Livesey began to prepare for the journey.
She calculated that she might start at two, and reach her mother's home by about six o'clock, always provided she could get a deputy to leave with the children.