“You know the place, and you’re a rare hand wi’ stock. I could trust you same as I could myself.”
“I’m over old,” Simon demurred again, “and done to boot. I’d not be worth the brass.”
“We’ve plenty o’ help on the place,” Will said. “It’d be worth it just to have you about. Nigh the same as having a vet on t’spot!” he added jokingly, trying to flatter him into acquiescence. “I’d be main glad for my own sake,” he went on, his face grave again and slightly wistful. “There’s times I fair ache for a crack wi’ somebody o’ my own. Women is nobbut women, when all’s said and done, and lads is like to think they know a deal better than their dad. … Ay, well, you can think it over and let me know,” he finished, in a disappointed tone.
Simon poked for a while longer, and succeeded in poking the cow as well as the dog. He was fighting hard with his pride as he scraped busily at the flags. The tie of blood pulled him, as well as the whole atmosphere of the prosperous place. He knew in his heart that he was never so happy as when he was with his brother, never so good a man as when he was preaching in Will’s shippons. As for pride, that would have to go by the board sooner or later; indeed, who would say that he had any right to it, even now? He made up his mind at last on a sudden impulse, lifting his head with a hasty jerk.
“I’ve had enough o’ thinking things over, thank ye all the same. I’ll be main glad o’ the job, Will, and that’s the truth. …” He sank back instantly, however, and fell to poking again. “Folk’ll have plenty to say, though, I reckon,” he added bitterly, “when they hear as I’m hired man to my younger brother!”
“They’ve always a deal to say, so what’s the odds? As for younger and older, there isn’t a deal to that when you get up in years. … There’s a good cottage across t’road,” he went on eagerly, bringing up reinforcements before Simon should retire. “It’s handy for t’stock, and there’s a garden and orchard as well. Lasses could see to Sarah, you’ll think on, if she’s that closer. There’s berry-bushes in t’garden and a deal besides. …”
Simon was busy shaking his head and saying he wasn’t worth it and that he was over old, but all the time he was listening with interest and even pleasure to Will’s talk. Milking had now begun, and already, as the levers swung back and forwards over the cattle’s heads, he found himself looking about the shippon with a possessive eye. Even in these few moments, life had taken a turn for the Thornthwaite of the desolate marsh farm. Already his back felt straighter, his eye brighter, his brain more alive. The drawbacks of the proposed position began to recede before the many advantages it had to offer. It was true, of course, that he would be his brother’s hired man, but it was equally true that he was the master’s brother, too. To all intents and purposes he would be master himself—that is to say, when Eliza wasn’t about! Will’s cottages were good, like everything else of Will’s, and the lasses could see to Sarah, as he said. For himself there would be the constant interest and stimulant of a big farm, as well as the mental relief of a steady weekly wage. He felt almost excited about it as they crossed the yard, making for Taylor’s cottage over the road. He tried not to think of what Sarah might say when she heard the news, still less of what Mrs. Will would most certainly say. He felt equal to both of them in his present spirited mood, and even tried to convince himself that in time they would make friends.
As they stood looking at Taylor’s cottage and Taylor’s gooseberry bushes and canes, Will suddenly asked his brother whether there was any news of Geordie. And Simon, when he had given the old answer that there was no news that was worth crossing the road to hear, turned his face away in the direction of Taylor’s hens, and enquired whether there was any news of Jim.
“There’s been none for a sight o’ years now,” Will answered sadly, leaning on the wall. “Eliza wrote him a letter as put his back up, and he’s never sent us a line since. He always set a deal more by you and your missis than he ever did by us. I’d ha’ stood his friend, poor lad, if he’d ha’ let me, but he always took it I was agen him, too.”
There was silence between them for a while, and then—“Eh, well, you’ve a mort of others to fill his place!” Simon sighed, watching a well-built lad swing whistling across the yard.
Will raised himself from the wall, and watched him, too.
“Ay, but I’d nobbut the one eldest son!” was all he said.
V
Sally led her aunt to the grand but unused parlour in which so many expensive and handsome things were doomed to spend their lives. There was a piano, of course, which none of the Blindbeck folk knew how to play, in spite of Eliza’s conviction that the gift was included in the price. A Chippendale bookcase made a prison for strange books never opened and never named, and the shut doors of a cabinet kept watch and ward over some lovely china and glass. There was a satinwood table with a velvet sheen, whose polished mirror never reflected a laughing human face. There was an American rocking-chair, poised like a floating bird, with cushions filled with the finest down ever drawn from an heirloom of a featherbed. Sarah would not have taken the rocking-chair, as a rule; she would have thought herself either too humble or too proud. But
