"Poor Ella! Poor lassie!" murmured the Squire, very gently. "I always hoped she would be the mistress of Heron Dyke when I was gone. But--but--but----" He broke off. He could not speak of it. Things just now seemed very bitter, grievously hard to bear.
"Won't you get up, master?"
"Not just now. You can come in by-and-by, Aaron," replied the Squire: and Aaron crept out of the room without another word.
The sitting-room of Aaron Stone and his wife was a homely apartment, opening from the kitchen. To this he betook himself, shut the door behind him, and sat down in silence. Dorothy had her lap full of white paper, cutting it out in fringed rounds to cover some preserves that had been made. Happening to look at her husband, she saw the tears trickling fast down his withered cheeks.
Dorothy's eyes and mouth alike opened. She gazed at him with a mixture of curiosity and alarm. Not for twenty years had she seen such a sight. Pushing back her silver hair under her neat white cap, she dropped the scissors and the paper, and sat staring.
"What is it?" she asked in a faint voice, picturing all kinds of unheard-of evils. "Anything happened to the lad, Aaron?"
"The lad" was Hubert, her grandson. He was very dear to Dorothy: perhaps not less so to Aaron. Aaron did not answer; could not: and, as if to relieve her fears, Hubert came in the next moment.
"Why, grandfather, what on earth has come to you?" cried the young man, no less astonished than Dorothy.
With a half sob, Aaron told what had come to them: the trouble had taken all his crusty ungraciousness out of him. The master was going to die. Spreckley said he could not keep him alive until next April. And Miss Ella would have to turn out of Heron Dyke to make way for those enemies, the other branch. And they should have to turn out too; and he and Dorothy, for all he knew, would die in the workhouse!
An astounding revelation. No one spoke for a little while. Then Dorothy began with her superstitions.