'I do not see what right you have to dictate to me.'
'I am advising only. Why, I will tell you.'
She turned her peddler's box round under her arm.
'Last night mother and I were going over the down, and it was dark. Mother had her notions as to the way, and she was all wrong. She was making direct for the edge of the cliff; my eyes are younger, and I saw it, and I would go this way when she persisted in going that. Mother is an obstinate woman, and she would go her course; and because I stuck to it she was wrong, she caught me up and was going to carry me along her way. If we had gone three steps farther, we should have bounced into kingdom come, and our bodies would be washing now against the pebble ridge. As good luck would have it, up came your father with a lantern, and he saved us. I would return the favour. You are being drawn along the wrong path by him, and so I turn on you the lantern of common-sense and say, Go right instead of going wrong. That is my advice; take or leave it as you will.'
Then Winefred shifted her package again and trudged away.
When she reached the cottage on the undercliff, she found that Job Rattenbury was out.
Her mother sat by the fire on a stool engaged in needlework, at the same time that she watched a pot that was boiling.
Winefred laid the case of wares aside, and stood drawing in the scent of cooking through her nose.
'Good!' said she, 'uncommon—the smell of onions is all over the place; I believe there is going to be beefsteak pudding.'