"Don't lend your hat," she used to say, "and then you'll not have to go bareheaded." And sometimes, talking of loans on securities, she would take a pinch of snuff and say she "reckoned nowt of that man who locked his own granary door and gave another man the key."
To all appearance, she lived only to scrape and hoard, moidering away her loveless life on the futile energies and sordid aims of a miser's wretched pleasures. But every now and then she had risen up out of the slough into which she had gradually sunk, and had done some grand things that marked her name with so many white stones. While she gloried in her skill in filching from the pig what would serve the chickens, in making Jenny go short to save to-day's baking of havre-bread, in skimping Tim's bowl of porridge—his appetite being a burden on her estate which she often declared would break her—she had more than once given a hundred pounds at a blow to build a raft for a poor drowning wretch who must otherwise have sunk. In fact, she was one of those people who are small with the small things of life and great with the great—who will grudge a daily dole of a few threshed-out stalks of straw, but who sometimes, when rightly touched, will shower down with both hands full sheaves of golden grain. That is, she had mean aims, a bad temper, no imagination, but the capacity for pity and generosity on occasions.
Above all things, she hated to be put out of the way or intruded on. When her brother Emmanuel came down on her without a word of warning, bringing a girl with eyes that, as she said, made her feel foolish to look at, and a manner part scared, part stony, and wholly unconformable, telling her to keep this precious-bit madam like a bale of goods till called for, and to do the best with it she could, she was justified, she said, in splurging against his thoughtlessness and want of consideration, taking a body like that all of a heap, without With your leave or By your leave, or giving one a chance of saying Yes I will, or No I won't.
But though she splurged she gave way; and after she had fumed and fussed, heckled the maid and harried the man, said she didn't see as how she could, and she didn't think as how she would, sworn there was no bedding fit to use, and that she had no place for the things—apples and onions chiefly—that were in the spare room if she gave it up for the young lass's use, she seemed to quiet down, and going over to Leam, standing mutely by the black-boarded fireplace, put on her spectacles, peered up into her face, and said in shrill tones, rasping as a saw, though she meant to be kind, "Ah, well! I suppose it must be; so go your ways up stairs with Jenny, bairn, and make yourself at home. It's little I have for a fine young miss like you to play with, but what I have you're welcome to; so make no bones about it: d'ye hear?"
"But I am in your way," said Leam, not moving. "You do not want me?"
Miss Gryce laughed. "Want ye?" she shouted. "Want ye, do you say? Nay, nay, honey, it was no wanting of you or your marras that would ever have given me a headache, I'll ensure ye. But now that you are here you can bide as long as you've a mind; and you're welcome kindly. And Emmanuel there knows that my word is as good as my bond, and what I say I mean."
"Am I to stay?" asked Leam, turning to Mr. Gryce with a certain forced humility which showed how much it cost her to submit.
"Yes," he answered, less cheerfully and more authoritatively than was his manner at North Aston, speaking without a lisp and with a full Cumberland accent. "It is the best thing I can do for you—all I have to offer."
To which Leam bent her sad head with pathetic patience—pathetic indeed to those who knew the proud spirit that it reported broken and humbled for ever. Following the red-armed, touzled, ragged maid to the dingy cabin that was to be her room, she left her friend to explain to his sister, so far as he chose and could, the necessity under which he found himself of leaving his adopted daughter, Leonora Darley, in her care for a week or two, until such time as he should return and claim her.
"Your adopted daughter? God bless my soul, man! but you are the daftest donnet I ever saw on two legs!" cried Keziah, snatching up the coarse gray knitting which was the sole unanchored circumstance in the room and casting off her heel viciously. "What call had you to adopt a daughter—you with never a wife to mother her nor a house of your own to take her to? For I reckon nowt of your furnished houses here and your beggarly apartments there, as you know. And now you can do nothing better than bring her here to fash the life out of me before the week's over! But that's always the way with you men. You talk precious big, but it's mighty little you put your hands to; and when you hack out yokes for which you get a deal of praise, you take care not to bear them on your own backs. It's us women who have to do that."