Asher twisted about, where he sat by the window nook, pretending to doze, and said, "The girl is nothing to me. She is nothing to any of us. She has been with you all the days of her life except such as you made her to spend with strangers. She is no sister of ours."
Then Adam turned to Ross, "And do you say the same?" he asked.
"What can she do here?" said Ross. "Nothing. This is no place for your great ladies. We work, here, every man and woman of us, from daylight to dark, in the fields and the dairy. Best send her back to her fine friends in London."
"Ay," said Jacob, glancing up with a brazen smile into Greeba's face, "or marry her straight off—that is the shortest way. I heard a little bird tell of someone who might have her. Don't look astonished, Miss, for I make no doubt you know who it is. He is away on the mountains now, but he'll be home before long."
Greeba's eyes glistened, but not a muscle of her countenance changed. Only she clutched at the back of her father's chair and clung to it. And Adam, struggling hard to master the emotion that made his whole body to sway and tremble in his seat, said slowly, "If she is not your sister, at least she is your mother's daughter, and a mother knows what that means." Then turning to Mrs. Fairbrother, who still stood apart with her housewife's apron to her eyes, he said, "Ruth, the child is your daughter, and by that deed you speak of she is entitled to her share of all that is here——"
"Yes," said Mrs. Fairbrother, sharply, "but only when I am done with it."
"Even so," said Adam, "would you see the child want before that, or drive her into any marriage, no matter what?"
"I will take her," said Mrs. Fairbrother deliberately, "on one condition."
"What is it, Ruth?" said Adam; "name it, that I may grant it."
"That you shall give up all control of her, and that she shall give up all thought of you."