“Never think as I aun’t willing, Tom. I’m willing enough, though I’d grown so unaccountable set on the new ploughs. Howsumdever, I’ve got things started like, and Zacky, maybe, when I’m gone, he’ll pull to and carry on, saum as I did; and father, he’s twice the head he had afore he bruk his leg and cudn’t git his drink. Seemingly, they’ll do valiant wudout me, and I ... well, I’ve come to love these fields so middling dear that if one day I find I’ve got to die fur them, reckon I shudn’t ought to mind much.”
3
“I must go and see Mus’ Sumption,” said Tom to Thyrza. He said it several times before he went, for the days swam in a golden fog over his home, shutting him into enchanted ground. It was hard to break out of it even to go to Worge, and he found himself shelving the thought of leaving for two hours of worse company the little garden where the daffodils followed the crocuses, the shop all stuffy with the smell of tea and candles, the bluish-whiteness of the little sag-roofed rooms, and his wife and child, who were not so much figures in the frame of it all as an essence, a sunshine soaking through it.... However, Thyrza kept him to his word.
“I’m tedious sorry fur Mus’ Sumption—he looks that worn and wild. Maybe you cud give him news of Jerry.”
“No good news.”
“Well, go up and have a chat wud the pore soul. Reckon he’ll be mighty glad to see you, and you’re sure to think of summat comforting to say.”
So Tom went, one evening after tea. He found the minister in his faded threadbare room at the Horselunges, writing the letter which every week he dropped into the post-box at Brownbread Street, and generally heard no more of. The evening sun poured angrily on his stooped grey head, and made the room warm and stuffy without the expense of a fire. The old, old cat sat sulkily before the empty grate, and the white mice tapped with little pink hands on the glass front of their cage. The thrush had been dead some months.
“Hello, Tom. This is kind of you, lad,” and Mr. Sumption sprang up in hearty welcome, shaking Tom by the hand, and actually tipping the cat out of the armchair so that his visitor might be comfortably seated.
Tom sat down and pulled out his pipe, and for some minutes they edged and skated about on general topics. Then the minister asked suddenly—
“And how did you leave Jerry?”