“We’re through, thank ye. We’re just off.” Sarah pushed her plate from her, and began to fumble shakily for the thread gloves. May looked across at her with a troubled glance, and gathered the parcels together, ready to move. Eliza, however, had no intention of allowing them to escape so soon.
“You’re surely not thinking o’ stirring yet!” she exclaimed, in a hurt tone. “What, we’ve barely as much as passed the time o’ day! You’ll not grudge me a word or two after all my trouble, and me that throng wi’ shopping I didn’t know where to turn. Will was as full of nods and becks as a row o’ poppies in a wind, and I’ve been fair aching ever since to know what he could be at.”
She turned in her seat to call a waitress, and ordered a substantial meal; after which, throwing back her fur, she leaned her arms on the table, and resumed her smile. Everybody in the place knew what Eliza Thornthwaite was having for her dinner, and here and there they were saying to each other, “They do themselves rarely at Blindbeck. … There’s a deal o’ brass to Blindbeck … ay, Blindbeck’s plenty o’ brass!” Eliza knew what they were saying, of course, and felt unctuously pleased; but May’s heart swelled as she looked at Sarah’s scanty, unfinished repast and the thin thread gloves that she was smoothing over her wrists. Eliza had taken off her own gloves by now, showing thick fingers and short nails. They were trapped in the alcove as long as she sat at the table-end, because of her big, overflowing figure which shut the two of them in. They would have to push their way past her if they wanted to get out, and Sarah would never as much as touch her with the end of a ten-foot pole.
“I’d ha’ done what I could, I’m sure,” Eliza was busy telling them again. “I’d never say no to folks as can’t help themselves. But there—I needn’t ha’ bothered about it—you’re as right as rain. Will had it you were off to t’doctor’s, but I made sure he was wrong. I haven’t seen you looking so well for a month o’ Sundays, and that’s the truth.”
She raised herself as the waitress set a steaming plate in front of her, and stared at it critically.
“Eh, well, you’ve not that much to bother you, have you?” she added kindly, setting to work—“nobbut Simon to see to, and just that bit of a spot? ’Tisn’t the same for you as it is for me, with that great place of our’n on my hands, and the house fair crowded out.”
Sarah did not speak, but she saw, as she was intended to see, a picture of the good farm where Mrs. Will reigned supreme, of her sons and daughters and their friends, and her hired lasses and lads; and after that another picture of her own empty home, where no youthful steps sounded along the floors, and no vibrant young voices rang against the roof. The pictures hurt her, as they were meant to do, as well as the cheerful comment upon her looks. Eliza always assumed that you were as strong as a horse, even if you lay on your deathbed at her feet.
“I never heard tell you were badly,” she persisted, fixing her eyes on Sarah’s face, which looked like parchment against the misty pane, “and surely to goodness I’d be more like to know than Will?”
“I’ll do, thank ye. I’m right enough,” Sarah said stiffly, forced into speech at last; and Eliza laughed victoriously and returned to her food with zest.
“You’ve always been rarely strong, as far as I can think on. I never heard tell as you ailed anything in your life. You were always a rare hand wi’ a knife and fork an’ all!” she finished, laughing again. “Will’s a bonny fool to go scaring folk wi’ suchlike tales.”
“Yes, but we did go to the doctor’s!” May broke out warmly, goaded into speech. “Mrs. Thornthwaite’s bothered with her eyes.”
Mrs. Will lifted her own sharply for a fresh stare at the defenceless face.
“Eh, now, you don’t say so!” she exclaimed cheerfully, with a quite uninterested air. “It’s bad hearing, is that, but they look right enough, I’m sure.”
“They’re bad, all the same!” May answered indignantly, on the verge of tears. “Doctor says she ought to have an operation right off.”
There was a little pause after the dread word operation, poignant in every class, but especially so in this. Even Mrs. Will was shocked momentarily into quiet. Her fork stayed arrested in midair, halfway to her mouth.
“Well, I never!” she observed at last, withdrawing her startled gaze. “Eh, now, I never did!” She set to work again at her food like a machine that has been stopped for a second by an outside hand. “I don’t hold much by operations myself,” she went on presently, growing fluent again. “I doubt they’re never no use. They’re luxuries for rich folk, anyway, seems to me, same as servants and motorcars and the like. But you’ll likely be asking somebody for a hospital ticket, so as you needn’t pay?”
“Nay, I think not,” Sarah said calmly, though her hands gripped each other in her threadbare lap.
“You’ll never go wasting your own brass on a job like yon!”
“Nay, nor that, neither.”
“You’ll borrow it, likely?” A slyness came into her voice. She peered at Sarah over her cup.
“Nay.”
“Ay, well, no matter where it come from, it would nobbut be money thrown away. You’re an old body now, Sarah, and folk don’t mend that much when they get
