"As I made it out, master, it was this sort o' way: It was a kind o' small-arms factory, and there was two young wenches in the finishin' shop o' one mind about him. So it came to making ch'ice, for him. And one o' them, by name Clara, she warns him if she catches him sweethearting with her shopmate, she'd just mark him. Both decent girls, ye see! And she was all as good as her word, with a little pot of vitrol, right in his eyes! And he run, roaring mad with pain, and was caught in the machinery, and made a spoiled man of, as I reckon, all his days. Name of Linklater."
"What a terrible business! And it may have been he wasn't to blame, either."
"No—pore chap! He'd just no consolation, as you might say. I count myself a well-off man, set against him. Just wait a bit, master, and see me when I'm clear of them crutches. Once I get to use my stick again, anybody'll say, to see me: 'Why, there's a man ain't got anything the matter with him!' Nor yet I shan't have, to speak of!"
Athelstan Taylor could not help comparing Jim's resolute optimism—poor crushed wreck that he was!—with his sister's aggressive meekness and its pious claim to resignation or uncomplaining acquiescence in what was really a most happy release, though paraded as a cruel blow of Fate. But he could not stay to chat. He had to get back to St. Vulgate's; have a talk about the local flock, chiefly goats, with his friend, who had come home the evening before; pack his trunk, and get to Euston by one-thirty, with or without lunch. So he had only a few more hurried words with Jim.
"You'll think of what I was saying to you, Jim?"
"Sure, master!"
"And the lassie will just trot back to Miss Fossett, before it's dark. She'd better; the house might be cold here. Won't you, Lizarann?" Lizarann will, honour bright! "And how about those kisses I'm to take to my own little girls?" Payable on demand, three crossed to the account of Phœbe, three to Joan; both names being now familiar to drawer. They are very loud—those kisses! Mr. Yorick says farewell and goes. Lizarann and her Daddy are again alone together. Eight whole weeks!
Oh, the hours that had seemed weeks, and the days that had seemed years, of waiting—waiting for this moment. And here it was! Daddy himself—come back out of that mysterious Hospital, where Lizarann had never been to see him! No wonder Lizarann did not know where to begin!
"Well, then, little lass! They haven't cut the little lass's tongue out amongst 'em?" A vehement headshake of denial precedes the first of the many things Lizarann can select, at random, from the multitude she has been resolving to tell Daddy all through this dreary period of privation.
"Teacher's new cat's black all over, only white on the stomach. Yass! And four of the kittens was drownded." Jim's sympathies are all ready for Teacher's cat's kittens. But he is not further called on to show them, for the child deserts the kittens almost instantly with "Oh, Daddy!—they took you to the Sospital."