'Does she get good pay?' asked the girl eagerly.

'I don't know,' replied Lucy shortly.

'Because, if there's good pay,' said the other, examining the work again closely, 'I'd soon learn it--why I'd learn it in a week, you see! If I stay here I shan't get no more silk-weaving. And of course I'll stay. I'm just sick of the country. I'd have come up long ago if I'd known where to find Davy.'

'I'm ready,' said Dora in a constrained voice beside her.

Louie Grieve looked up at her.

'Oh, you needn't look so glum!--I haven't hurt it. I'm used to good things, stuffs at two guineas a yard, and the like of that. What money do you take a week?' and she pointed to the frame.

Something in the tone and manner made the question specially offensive. Dora pretended not to hear it.

'Shall we go now?' she said, hurriedly covering her precious work up from those sacrilegious fingers and putting it away.

'Lucy, you ought to be going home.'

'Well, I will directly,' said Lucy. 'Don't you bother about me.'

They all went downstairs. Lucy put up her veil, and pressed her face against the window, watching for them. As she saw them cross Market Street, she was seized with hungry longing. She wanted to be going with them, to talk to him herself--to let him see what she had gone through for him. It would be months and months, perhaps, before they met again. And Dora would see him--his horrid sister--everyone but she. He would forget all about her, and she would be dull and wretched at Hastings.

But as she turned away in her restless pain, she caught sight of her changed face in the cracked looking-gla.s.s over the mantelpiece.

Her white lips tightened. She drew down her veil, and went home.

Meanwhile Dora led the way to Potter Street. Louie took little notice of any attempts to talk to her. She was wholly engaged in looking about her and at the shops. Especially was she attracted by the drapers' windows in St. Ann's Square, p.r.o.nouncing her opinion loudly and freely as to their contents.

Dora fell meditating. Young Grieve would have his work cut out for him, she thought, if this extraordinary sister were really going to settle with him. She was very like him--strangely like him. And yet in the one face there was a quality which was completely lacking in the other, and which seemed to make all the difference. Dora tried to explain what she meant to herself, and failed.

'Here's Potter Street,' she said, as they turned into it. 'And that's his shop--that one with the stall outside. Oh, there he is!'

David was in fact standing on his step talking to a customer who was turning over the books outside.

Louie looked at him. Then she began to run. Old Grieve too, crimson all over, and evidently much excited, hurried on. Dora fell behind, her quick sympathies rising.

'They won't want me interfering,' she said, turning round.

'I'll just go back to my work.'

Meanwhile, in David's little back room, which he had already swept and garnished--for after his letter of the night before, he had somehow expected Louie, to rush upon him by the earliest possible train--the meeting of these long-sundered persons took place.

David saw Reuben come in with amazement.

'Why, Uncle Reuben! Well, I'm real glad to see you. I didn't think you'd have been able to leave the farm. Well, this is my bit of a place, you see. What do you think of it?'

And, holding his sister by the hand, the young fellow looked joyously at his uncle, pride in his new possessions and the recollection of his dest.i.tute childhood rushing upon him together as he spoke.

'Aye, it's a fine beginning yo've made, Davy,' said the old man, cautiously looking round, first at the little room, with its neat bits of new furniture in Louie's honour, and then through the gla.s.s door at the shop, which was now heavily lined with books. 'Yo wor allus a cliver lad, Davy. A' think a'll sit down.'

And Reuben, subsiding into a chair, fell forthwith into an abstraction, his old knotted hands trembling a little on his knees.

Meanwhile David was holding Louie at arm's-length to look at her.

He had kissed her heartily when she came in first, and now he was all pleasure and excitement.

''Pon my word, Louie, you've grown as high as the roof! I say, Louie, what's become of that smart pink dress you wore at last "wake," and of that overlooker, with the moustaches, from New Mills, you walked about with all day?'

She stared at him open-mouthed.

'What do you mean by that?' she said, quickly.

David laughed out.

'And who was it gave Jim Wigson a box on the ears last fifth of November, in the lane just by the Dye-works, eh, Miss Louie?--and danced with young Redway at the Upper Mill dance, New Year's Day?--and had words with Mr. James at the office about her last "cut," a fortnight ago--eh, Louie?'

'What _ever_ do you mean?' she said, half crossly, her colour rising. 'You've been spying on me.'

She hated to be mystified. It made her feel herself in some one else's power; and the wild creature in her blood grew restive.

'Why, I've known all about you these four years!' the lad began, with dancing eyes. Then suddenly his voice changed, and dropped: 'I say, look at Uncle Reuben!'

For Reuben sat bent forward, his light blurred eyes looking out straight before him, with a singular yet blind intentness, as though, while seeing nothing round about him, they pa.s.sed beyond the walls of the little room to some vision of their own.

'I don't know whatever he came for,' began Louie, as they both examined him.

'Uncle Reuben,' said David, going up to him and touching him on the shoulder, 'you look tired. You'll be wanting some dinner. I'll just send my man, John Dalby, round the corner for something.'

And he made a step towards the door, but Reuben raised his hand.

'Noa, noa, Davy! Shut that door, wiltha?'

David wondered, and shut it.

Then Reuben gave a long sigh, and put his hand deep into his coat pocket, with the quavering, uncertain movement characteristic of him.

'Davy, my lad, a've got summat to say to tha.'

And with many hitches, while the others watched him in astonishment, he pulled out of his pocket a canvas bag and put it down on an oak stool in front of him. Then he undid the string of it with his large awkward fingers, and pushed the stool across to David.

'Theer's sixty pund theer, Davy--sixty pund! Yo can keawnt it--it's aw reet. A've saved it for yo, this four year--four year coom la.s.st Michaelmas Day. Hannah nor n.o.bory knew owt abeawt it. But it's yourn--it's yor share, being t' half o' Mr. Gurney's money. Louie's share--that wor different; we had a reet to that, she bein a growin girl, and doin nowt mich for her vittles. Fro the time when yo should ha had it--whether for wages or for 'prenticin--an yo _could_ na ha it, because Hannah had set hersen agen it,--a saved it for tha, owt o' t' summer cattle moastly, without tellin n.o.bory, so as not to mak words.'

David, bewildered, had taken the bag into his hand. Louie's eyes were almost out of her head with curiosity and amazement. '_Mr.

Gurney's money!_' What did he mean? It was all double-Dutch to them.

David, with an effort, controlled himself, being now a man and a householder. He stood with his back against the shop door, his gaze fixed on Reuben.

'Now, Uncle Reuben, I don't understand a bit of what you've been saying, and Louie don't either. Who's Mr. Gurney? and what's his money?'

Unconsciously the young man's voice took a sharp, magisterial note.

Reuben gave another long sigh. He was now leaning on his stick, staring at the floor.