Again Greeba was silent.
"I'll beg of you to mend your manners," cried Mrs. Fairbrother. "It's full time you were wedded and gone."
"But perhaps I don't wish to leave home," said Greeba.
"Tush!" said Mrs. Fairbrother. "The lad is well enough, and if he hasn't land he has some money, and is like to have more. I'll give you a week to think of it, and if he ever comes and speaks for you I'll ask you to give him his civil answer. You will be three and twenty come Martinmas, and long before your mother was as old as that she had a couple of your brothers to fend for."
"Some of my brothers are nearly twice my age, and you don't ask them to marry," said Greeba.
"That's a different matter," said Mrs. Fairbrother.
It turned out that the week was more than enough to settle the difference between Greeba and her mother, for in less time than that Mrs. Fairbrother was stricken down by a mortal illness. It was only a month since she had turned Adam from her door, but her time was already at hand, and more than he predicted had come to pass. She had grown old without knowing a day's illness; her body, like a rocky headland that gives no sign of the seasons, had only grown harder every year, with a face more deeply seamed; but when she fell it was at one blow of life's ocean. Three little days she had lost appetite, on the morning of the fourth day she had found a fever in a neglected cattle trough that had drained into the well, and before night she had taken her death-warrant.
She knew the worst, and faced it, but her terror was abject. Sixty-five years she had scraped and scratched, but her time was come. She had thought of nothing save her treasure, and there it lay, yet it brought her no solace.
Two days she tossed in agony, remembering the past, and the price she had paid, and made others to pay, for all that she had held so dear and must leave so soon, for now it was nothing worth. Then she sent for the parson, Parson Gell, who was still living, but very old. The good man came, thinking his mission was spiritual comfort, but Mrs. Fairbrother would hear nothing of that. As she had lived without God in the world, even so did she intend to die. But some things that had gone amiss with her in her eager race after riches she was minded to set right before her time came to go. In lending she had charged too high an interest; in paying she had withheld too much for money; in seizing for mortgage she had given too little grace. So she would repay before it was too late, for Death was opening her hands.
"Send for them all," she cried; "there's Kinvig of Ballagawne, and Corlett's widow at Ballacreggan, and Quirk of Claughbane, and the children of Joughan the weaver at Sherragh Vane, and Tubman of Ginger Hall, and John-Billy-Bob at Cornah Glen, and that hard bargainer, old Kermode of Port-e-chee. You see, I remember them all, for I never forget anything. Send for them, and be quick fetching them, or it'll be waste of time for them to come."