"No, Gray's close as anything, but what is it?"
"Oh, my dear, 'tis nothing but 'er fancy. There, go along, I bain't
going to tell 'ee."
"I don't need for Gray to tell me Wastralls is a whisht old house for
young maidens."
"My dear," said Mrs. Tom reasonably, "you'll be able to run 'ome any
time to see us and yer auntie is goin' to give yer twenty pound; good
money, 'edn't it?"
"Iss, well, I know that's all right," returned Richbell soberly.
Sabina's open-handedness had put many a pleasure in her way,
nevertheless instinct warned her against the place and she was Mrs.
Tom's own child.
"Well, why don't you like goin' there?"
"I don't feel I like," she hesitated, lowering her voice, "I don't feel
I like Uncle Leadville."
"There's no 'arm in 'im," encouraged the mother, "although 'e do look
downy. Any'ow 'e's nothing to do with you. You'll be with yer auntie."
"Iss." The girl could not put into words her feeling that Leadville
being fundamentally different from the easy-going folk among whom she
had hitherto lived was vaguely alarming. "Well, he never look yer
straight in the face."
"My dear, that's the way of'n. 'E 'edn't goin' to take no notice of
you."
"Mammy!" She put her young arms round her mother's neck, so proving
herself the taller by a couple of inches, "I wish you would go down with
me to-morrow morning--I don't feel I like goin' by myself."
Who could resist Richbell, when Richbell changed from gay defiance to
entreaty? Not Mrs. Tom! "Well, I'll go down with you. I shall be able
to see your auntie the same time. I'll light up the fire before I go
and the kettle'll be boiling by the time I get back. Come, my dear,"
she turned and walked up the trim path of sea-gravel edged with quartz,
"let's be goin' in, else we shan't get up early in the mornin'."
December dawns are late and though, as Mrs. Tom had feared, the tired
family slept until after cockcrow, morning had not broken when she and
Richbell hurried down between the tamarisks, silver-grey with frost, and
in at the yard gate of Wastralls. George Biddick, crossing from the
shed to the stables nodded a greeting, but otherwise the yard was
deserted.