“Eh, now, Eliza!” she said good-humouredly, and with something almost like kindliness in her voice, “whatever-like use is it telling a man owt when he’s chock full o’ summat else? Simon was fit to crack himself over some joke as he’d heard in Witham, talking a deal o’ nonsense and laughing fit to shake the trap! Coming from market’s no time any day for telling a man important news, and anyway I’d never ha’ got a word in edgeways if I’d tried.” She paused a moment, and then continued, aspiring to still greater heights. “I’d another reason an’ all for wanting it kept quiet. I knew he’d be sure an’ certain to go shouting it out here.”
“Ay, and why ever not, I’d like to know!” Eliza gasped, when she was able to speak. “Come to that, you were smart enough shoving it down our throats yourself!”
“Ay, but that was because I lost my temper,” Sarah admitted, with a noble simplicity which again struck the other dumb. “If I hadn’t ha’ lost my temper,” she added, “I should ha’ said nowt—nowt!”—a statement so perfectly true in itself that it needed nothing to make it tell. “I never meant you should hear it so sudden-like,” she went on gently, the kindness growing in her voice. “It’s hard lines our Geordie should ha’ done so well for himself, and not your Jim. I never meant to crow over you about it, Eliza—I didn’t, indeed. I never thought o’ such a thing!”
Eliza was making a noise like a motorcar trying to start, but Sarah took up her tale before she could reply.
“As for letting Simon give in his notice as we’d fixed, I don’t know as it’ll make that much differ, after all. There’s my eyes, for one thing, as I mentioned before. Blind folk is only a nuisance wherever they be, but they’re a real, right-down nuisance on a farm. And Geordie’ll want more nor a farm, I reckon, wi’ all yon brass to splash. He’ll want summat wi’ stables and gardens and happen fishing an’ all—a grand gentleman’s spot, likely, same as the Hall itself.”
Mrs. Will felt the world wheeling rapidly about her, and tried to clutch at it as it went. Her temples throbbed and her throat worked, and her staring eyes went blind. She groped her way to the window, and flung up the stiff sash; and, as she stood there, drawing panting breaths, Simon and Will came sauntering through the yard. Her eyes, clearing again in the rush of air, caught the incipient smile on Simon’s face, the new signs of interest and life in his whole look. He could know nothing about the great news, if what Sarah said was true; the utmost that he could do was to sense it in the air. But his look of subtle contentment was a sufficient annoyance in itself. It was the last straw, indeed, which broke the back of Eliza’s self-control. When she turned again her words and her breath came with the leap of a mountain stream.
“I wonder you’re not afraid, Sarah Thornthet, to be setting there reeling off lies like hanks o’ cotton off a bobbin! Happen you’re just thinking you’ll get a rise out o’ me and mine, but if that’s the best you can do by way of a joke, well, I think nowt on’t, and so I tell you! Geordie coming home wi’ brass! Geordie wanting the Hall and suchlike! Nay, Sarah, I might ha’ believed the rest wi’ a bit o’ pulling and pushing, but yon last’s taking it over far. Why, I’d as lief believe he was going to get the King’s Crown right out, wi’ mappen Witham Town Hall for a spot to live in! As for thinking o’ me and my feelings and suchlike stuff, you’ve never troubled that much about ’em to start bothering now. There’s only two ways about it, Sarah, and I reckon I know which it is. It’s either a smart lie you’ve been telling from end to end, or else it’s never Geordie that’s coming, but our Jim!”
She choked when she came to the last words, both from sudden nervousness, and lack of breath, and again Sarah gave her well-bred laugh.
“I wouldn’t be as hard o’ faith as you, Eliza,” she said placidly—“not for a deal! It’s you, not me, would have heard if Jim was coming home. What’s Jim to do wi’ me?”
“He’d a deal to do wi’ you when he was in England, as everybody knows! Nay, you hated the sight o’ him—that’s true enough—but you were right keen on trying to set him agen me, all the same. What, the last letter I had from him—and terble saucy an’ all—was blacking me over summat I’d said of you as his lordship didn’t like! Nay, if he come home, Sarah, he’d come to you, not me, and right glad you’d be to have him while he’d a penny before his teeth! Ay, and why shouldn’t our lad ha’ done as well as yours, and happen better, come to that? He was the smarter lad o’ the two, and come o’ smarter folk—ay, but he did now, Sarah, so you’ll kindly shut your mouth! You’ve only to look at the way we’ve done at Blindbeck, me and Will, and then at the mess o’ things you’ve made at yon pig-hull on the marsh! It stands to reason our lad would be the likely one to make out, just as it isn’t in reason to expect owt from yours!”
She came a step nearer as she finished, twisting her plump hands, her voice, as it mounted higher, full of bewilderment and angry tears.
“Will you swear to it Jim isn’t coming, Sarah?” she demanded—“will you swear? Will you swear as it isn’t my lad that’s coming and not yours?”
Sarah said, “Ay, I will that!” in a hearty tone,
