CHAPTER XXXIV
BY THE CANAL
It was noon on that day, the day of the meeting at Riddsley, and Mary was sitting in the parlor at the Gatehouse. She was stooping over the fire with her eyes on the embers. The old hound lay beside her with his muzzle resting on her shoe, and Mrs. Toft, solidly poised on her feet, on the farther side of the table, rolled her apron about her arms and considered the pair.
“It’s given us all a rare shock,” she said as she marked the girl’s listless pose, “the poor Master’s death! That sudden and queer, too! I don’t know that I’m better for it, myself, and Toft goes up and down like a toad under a harrow, he’s that restless! For ’Truria, she’s fairly mazed. Her body’s here and her thoughts are lord knows where. Toft, he seems to think something will come of her and her reverend——”
“I hope so,” Mary said gently.
“But it’s beyond me what Toft thinks these days. I asked him point—blank yesterday, ‘Toft,’ I says, ‘are we going or are we staying?’ And, bless the man, he looks at me as if he’d eat me. ‘Take time and you’ll know,’ he says. ‘But whose is the house?’ I asks, ‘and who’s to pay us?’ ‘God knows!’ he says, and whiffs out of the room like one of these lucifers!”
“I think that the house is Mr. Basset’s,” Mary explained, “for the rest of the lease; that’s about three years.”
“But you’ll not be staying, begging your pardon, Miss? I suppose you’ll be naming the day soon? The Master’s gone and his lordship will be wanting you somewhere else than here.”
“Yes, Mrs. Toft,” Mary said quietly. “I suppose so.”
Mrs. Toft looked for a blush and saw none, and she drew her conclusions. She went on another tack. “There’s like to be a fine rumpus in the town to-day,” she said comfortably. “The Squire’s brought a foreigner down to trim their nails, and there’s to be a wagon and speaking and such like foolishness at the Maypole. As if all the speeches of all the fools in Staffordshire would lower the quartern loaf! Anyway, if what Petch says is true, the farmers are that mad there’s like to be lives lost!”
Mary stooped and carefully put a piece of wood on the fire.