Kitabı oku: «The Unbidden Guest», sayfa 8

The girl’s groans stopped him. “To think that you can’t guess,” she wailed, “though I’ve as good as told you in so many words!”

“No, I can’t guess,” answered David decisively. “What’s more, I don’t want to. So I give it up. Hush, Missy, not another word! I won’t have it! I’ll put my fingers in my ears if you will persist. I don’t care whether it’s true or whether it isn’t, I’m not going to sit here and listen to you pitching into yourself when – when – ”

“When what?”

“Why, when I’ve grown that fond of you, my dear!”

“And are you fond of me?” said Missy, in a softened voice that quivered badly. She put her arms once more round the old man’s neck, and let her tousled head rest again upon his shoulder. “Are you really so fond of me as all that?”

“My dear, we all are. You know that as well as I do.”

Missy made one important exception in her own mind, but not aloud. Kind, worn fingers were now busy with her hair, now patting her shoulder tenderly; and in all her poor life Missy had never known a father or a father’s love. Even with the will she could not have spoken for some minutes. When she did speak next it was to echo the old man’s last words; “Yes, I know that as well as you do. And I know how it hurts! But tell me, can you possibly be as fond of me after this afternoon?”

“I can,” said old Teesdale. “I can only speak for myself. Maybe I think more of you than anyone else does; I’ve seen more of you, and had more of your kindness. Nothing could make me forget that, Missy – how you’ve sat with me, and walked with me, and read to me, and taken notice of the old man, no matter who else was by or who wasn’t. No, I could never forget all that, my dear; nothing that you could do could make me forget one half of that!”

“And nothing that I have done?”

“Still less anything that you have done.”

“But if you found out that I’d been deceiving you all along, and obtained every mortal thing on false pretences, and taken the filthiest advantage of your kindness – surely that would wipe out any little good turns which anybody would have done you? Of course it would!”

“It might. But anybody wouldn’t have done ‘em —anybody wouldn’t,” the old man said, leaving a kiss upon the hair between his fingers. “At all events, Missy, there’s one thing that nothing could blot out; for whatever you did, you’d still be your dear father’s daughter!”

Very slowly and deliberately, Missy unwound her arms and lifted her head, and got out of the chair, and stood to her full height in the dark verandah.

“That’s just it,” she said calmly, distinctly. “That’s just what I was coming to.”

But Mr. Teesdale had also risen, and he was not listening to Missy. For footsteps were drawing near through the grass – footsteps and the rustle of stiff Sunday gowns, and the creaking of comfortless Sunday boots – and a harsh voice was crying more harshly than was even its wont:

“Is that you, David? And is that Miriam beside you? And how dare she come back and show her face, I wonder? Ay, that’s what I want to know!”

David ran to meet and expostulate with his harder half. It was seldom that he even tried to quell that outspoken tongue; but now he both tried and succeeded, though Missy in the verandah could not hear by how much artifice or in what words. In another minute, however, Mr. Teesdale was again at her side, while his wife and daughter went past them and into the house without further parley.

These few words were then exchanged in the verandah:

“Missy, she didn’t mean it. You’ll hear no more about it – not a word from anybody.”

“I deserve to, nevertheless.”

“So you’ll come in, won’t you, and have your supper like a dear good girl?”

“Ah, yes, I’ll come in now.”

“I was so afraid – Mrs. T. is that hasty and plain-spoken – that what she said might make you say you’d never come into our house any more.”

“Not it,” said Missy with a laugh. “That’s the sort of thing to have the very opposite effect upon you. Come on in!”

CHAPTER XIV. – A BOLT FROM THE BLUE

Mr. Teesdale sat at his end of the old green tablecloth, reading a singularly unseasonable communication from that middle-man who bought the milk but was never in a position to pay for it. The time was half-past eleven in the forenoon of Boxing Day, and the daily delivery of letters had just taken place. It was naturally a little later than usual, but Mr. Teesdale wished with all his heart that there had been no delivery at all. At length he raised a tired face from his bad news, and let his eyes rest for the comfort of his spirit upon the red head and fringe of his solitary companion in the parlour. Missy was seated on the sofa, and all of her but the top of her head and the bottom of her dress, with a finger or two of each hand, was hidden behind the Argus newspaper. Missy always liked to see the Argus as soon as it came, though by that time it was never less than a day old, because Mr. Teesdale had it from a friend when the friend was done with it. This morning, as usual, he had handed it to the girl before opening his letters. He now sat staring absently at the girl’s hair, and was therefore somewhat slow to notice that the narrow strip of forehead under the fringe was gone so white that it was difficult to tell where paper ended and forehead began. No sooner had David seen this, however, than he saw also the paper jumping up and down in the girl’s grasp; whereupon the unpleasant letter in his own hands went straightway out of his head.

“Missy,” he cried, “what’s the matter, my dear? What have you seen?”

Missy dashed down the paper and was on her feet in an instant. There was extraordinary spirit in the action, and her eyes were very bright.

“What have I seen?” she repeated, in a tone that suppressed excitement rather than concern. “Nothing; that is, nothing that could interest any of you; only something about a friend of mine.”

Yet she bounced out of the room without another word, and forthwith went in search of Arabella.

She found her in the dairy, which was half under the ground, and wholly out of the way.

“Arabella,” she cried wildly, “put down that bowl and shake hands. We’re safe!”

Now Arabella was not a person of quick perceptions. She was imaginative, she was inquisitive, she had a romantic side which had very nearly been the ruin of her at the responsible age of thirty-two. Like the parent whom she so strongly resembled in her undiscerning nature and easygoing temperament, she was sufficiently credulous, weak, and unwise in her generation. On the other hand, she was by no means without her father’s merits. She had the same talent for affection, the same positive genius for uncommon gratitude. She could never make light of a good turn, not even in her own mind; nor out of her own mouth could she make too much of one. In the family circle she had been very silent and subdued during these last days, but to Missy in private she had opened a contrite and a very grateful heart more times than the other had liked to listen. Vague doubts and suspicions of Missy she had entertained in the beginning; she might have them still; nay, they might well be stronger than ever, after yesterday.

But one thing was now certain concerning these shy misgivings; they might rise to the mind, but they would never again pass the lips. No matter what Missy did or said, henceforth, Arabella would shield her with all the ingenuity at her command: which was not a little: only it was sometimes hindered by a certain slowness to perceive which frequently accompanies a constitutional readiness to imagine. So when Missy wanted her to shake hands because they were safe, Arabella looked perfectly blank.

“How are we safe?” she asked. “What are we safe from?”

“Why, from your friend.”

“My friend? Ah!” She understood now.

“Yes, he won’t trouble us much more,” pursued Missy, sidling rhythmically from one foot to the other, while her eyes lit up the dairy. “O ‘Bella, ‘Bella, if you knew how I feel – ”

“Stop a moment,” said Arabella, white as the milk that she had spilled in her agitation; “is he – is he – dead?”

“Dead? I wish he was. No, no; he’s only in prison.”

“In prison?”

“Yes; run in the day before Christmas Eve – the day after I swep’ him out o’ this – no, the very day itself. See where you’d ha’ been! ‘Bella, ‘Bella, let’s drink his health in a pint of cream! It seems too good to be true.”

But Arabella was grasping with both hands the shelf which supported the bowls of milk for creaming, and her face was drawn and wretched.

“Don’t, Missy!” she exclaimed with tears in her voice. “You wouldn’t if you knew how sorry I am. What is he in prison for? What has he been doing?”

“Writing a cheque he had no business to write and getting the money. That’s what it was this time. But it isn’t the first time; no, don’t you believe it.”

“I am so sorry,” repeated Arabella, covering her eyes.

“But why? What for?”

“For him. I – I thought I loved him.”

“You thought you loved him,” Missy repeated buoyantly. She was all buoyancy now. “Yes, many a girl has thought that before you, my dear. And them that thought it too long, they didn’t come to think they hated him. Not they! They jolly soon knew!”

The other’s wet eyes were wide open.

“How is this, Missy? You seem to know all about him. You never told me that before.”

“No, I didn’t. What was the use when I’d got rid of him – for the time being, anyway? I was very much afraid he’d turn up again, and I was keeping what I knew until he did. I thought it’d be time enough to tell you then; but I’ll tell you now if you like. It makes no difference one way or the other, now that our friend’s in quod. Very well then, as soon as ever I heard his voice that dark night I knew that I’d heard it before. Never mind where – maybe in England, maybe on the ship, maybe after I landed in Melbourne. You mustn’t want to know too much. It’s good enough, isn’t it, that I knew what sort he was, and that when I’d known him before he was sailing under another name altogether? Yes, I thought that’d knock you! You knew Stanborough, I knew Mowbray, and the police, they’ve run in a man of the name of Paolo Verini, alias Thomas Stanborough, alias Paul Mowbray. ‘A handsome man of foreign appearance,’ the Argus says. You may look for yourself. But if that isn’t good enough for you I don’t know what is.”

“It might be someone else for all that,” murmured Arabella, shuddering at the thought of the man in prison. “Have you any other reason for making so certain that it is the same?”

“I have. I wouldn’t tell you before, but now what does it matter? I’ve expected him turning up every hour since that night. He swore that he would; and he would have, you may depend, if he hadn’t got run in.”

Arabella was silent; she felt that also. She had never been able to understand how a man of so firm a purpose as her lover should have made so facile a capitulation to a mere girl like Missy. Presently she asked a question:

“Did he recognise you. Missy?”

“No,” replied Missy, after a little hesitation. “No, he did not,” she repeated more firmly. “And look you here,’.ella, take my advice and never give him another thought. He was a bad egg, that’s what he was; you may thank your stars that he is where he is, as I thank mine.”

“I can’t help being sorry,” sighed Arabella, wiping her eyes with her apron; “but that doesn’t make me less thankful to you, Missy. You’ve saved me, body and soul. I was under a spell, but you broke it. I don’t understand it. I can’t feel it now. But God knows how I felt it then, and what would have got me but for you! So I can never be thankful enough to you, Missy, and I shall never, never be able to tell you how thankful I am.”

“Then never try,” said Missy lightly; “only think kindly of me when you find it a hard job. That’s all you’ve got to try to do.”

And with a light-hearted laugh and a kiss from the fingers Missy was out of the dairy and above ground in the brilliant noonday sun.

There was no one about in the yard. Missy was glad of that, because there was no living soul whom she desired to see or to speak to for hours to come. The naked sword hanging over her head had suddenly been lifted down, snapped, and thrown away; she must be alone to appreciate that. Nevertheless this should be her last day at the farm; and again, she must be alone to make the most of the last day. Alone to consider all things, especially the life lying ahead; alone to drink for the last time of the sweet sensations of this peaceful spot, and so deeply, that the taste should be with her till her dying day. Then she would depart in peace; and lastly, she must be alone to invent the why and wherefore of this departure.

So she opened the gate leading out of the yard, and going down through the gum-trees into that shallow gully, she mounted the other side, and stopped to stand in triumph under the very tree from behind which Stanborough, or Verini, had sprung and caught her in his arms. She pictured him in his cell at that moment, with only one small iron-barred square of that blue sky which was all for her; and she drew into her throat and nostrils a long draught of eucalyptus perfume. This was one of the sensations which she desired always to remember. At length, still sniffing and glancing ever at the deep blue sky above the tree-tops, yet with both eyes and ears attentive to her friends the parrots, she turned sharp to the left, crossed the road below the Cultivation, and struck into the thick of the timber on the further side.

She had shut out of her light mind every thought of penitence and remorse. There was no further occasion for her to take a serious view of the situation. The very air seemed charged with a new and most delicious sense of freedom; enough, for the present, to revel in this, without thinking of anything at all. Another comparatively new sense, that of her own iniquity, was a dead nerve for the time being. Missy was too thankful for what she had escaped to consider what she deserved; indeed, she had considered this sufficiently. On the other hand, she was enjoying a natural reaction in the most natural manner imaginable. All by herself, among the gum-trees, she burst into song, or rather the snatch of one. And on the whole one would call it unconscious song, for the snatch ran —

 
“You should ‘a’ seen ‘im jump!
I didn’t give a dump!
For I yells to ‘is pals
‘Now look at him, gals —
‘Arry ‘e ‘as the – ’”
 

Here it broke off. Missy halted too.

“Morning, John William,” said she.

He was standing in front of her, with his gun under his arm and a dead hare in the other hand. He returned her salute gravely. Then —

“You seem very happy,” he said, with a spice of bitterness.

“Oh, I haven’t got it,” laughed Missy, “have you?”

“Got what?”

“The ‘ump.”

He shook his head and grinned; as he looked at her the grin broadened.

“So I didn’t shock your head off, either!” exclaimed Missy.

“Not likely. I thought it was splendid myself.”

“Then why did you look so glum just now?”

“Missy, I didn’t – ”

“You did! I thought you’d caught the ‘ump from ‘Arry. I believe you have. You’re looking as glum as ever again!”

It was true. But he said:

“Missy, I don’t feel a bit glum.”

“No?”

She was examining him coolly, critically, and he knew it.

“Not a bit!” he reiterated, hacking out a tuft of grass with his right heel. Then his miserable eyes rose fiercely upon the girl. She had been waiting for this look, however.

“You are making a great mistake,” she said, “if you are imagining yourself the least little atom in love with me.”

For the instant her outspokenness enraged him; then it made him meek.

“I am imagining no such thing, Missy; I know it. But I also know that it is a mistake – when you are so far above me.”

“There you go! That is your mistake. It’s the other way about – it’s you that’s so far above me. John William, if you only knew what a bad lot I am – ”

“I don’t care what you are.”

“You don’t know what I am. That’s just it! I’m not what you think I am, I’m not what I make myself out to be; I’m not – I’m not!”

She was speaking passionately, being, in fact, once more on the verge of a full confession. All in a moment the impulse had come over her, and nothing could have stopped her but the thing that did. John William was not listening to a word she said; he was only gazing in her eyes.

“I don’t care what you are, Missy; I shouldn’t care if you were as black as sin! No, I should like it, for the blacker you were, the nearer I should be to you – the more chance I should have. If you were bad – which is all nonsense – you would still be too good for me; but I should love you, Missy, whether or no. I shall love you all my days!” He looked at her once with ravening eyes, and then spun round upon his heel. She called him back in a broken voice to tell him everything; but he shook his head without looking round, and the tree-trunks closed behind him like a door. Then Missy drew a very long breath, wiped her eyes, and sat down to think.

Her conscience was wide awake now. For an hour she let it tear and rend her. By the end of the second hour she had hardened her heart once more.

“I’m not meant to confess, that’s evident,” she exclaimed aloud. “I was a little fool ever to think of it.”

A little fool, at that rate, she continued to be; inasmuch as for yet another hour she permitted her mind to dwell upon her attempted confessions, to old Teesdale yesterday, to John William to-day. It hurt her to think of the kindness and credulity of those two. It hurt her so much that she wept bitterly, only thinking of old David and John William his son. Yet she was thankful they had not listened, she was thankful they did not know, she was doubly thankful that she was to go away of her own accord, and without being found out after all. If she could ever make the slightest atonement! But that was for future thought.

The afternoon was well advanced when Missy once more crossed the road below the Cultivation. She was now in a perfectly philosophic frame of mind. Also she had slightly altered her plans. She would not invent an excuse for her departure; she would go without saying a word to any of them; she would run away in the night. And she would leave all her things behind her. The present value of them would not go far towards redeeming Mr. Teesdale’s watch; still they must be worth something.

This she was thinking as she came to the end of the gum-trees, and opened the gate which was grown familiar to her hand and eye. Then suddenly she reflected that dinner must long be over, that she would barely be in time for tea. And the goodness of Mrs. Teesdale’s tea was the next thought that filled her mind: she had the smell in her nostrils, she could almost feel the hot fluid coursing over her parched palate as she rounded the hen-yard and caught sight of the verandah. Thereat she came to a sudden standstill, and yet another new set of thoughts. The verandah was half hidden by a two-horse buggy drawn up in front of it.

“More visitors!” said Missy. “Well, I won’t shock this lot. I wonder who they are? They must be swells!”

In fact, a man in livery held the reins, the afternoon sun made fireworks with the burnished harness, and the buggy was a very good one indeed.

Missy kept her eyes upon it as she approached the house. She never saw the faces that appeared for an instant at the parlour window and then disappeared. Her foot was lifted, to be set down in the verandah, when the door was flung open, and Mrs. Teesdale marched forth.

“Stand back!” she screamed. “Not another step! You would dare to set foot inside my doors again!”

Missy fell back in wonderment. As she did so a dainty-looking young lady appeared in the doorway behind Mrs. Teesdale, and screwed up her fair face at the glare of the afternoon sun. And Missy left off wondering, for in an instant she knew who that dainty-looking young lady must be.

CHAPTER XV. – A DAY OF RECKONING

Missy retreated a step from the verandah, stood still, and gasped. Then she pressed both hands to her left side. She was as one walking on the down line in order to avoid the up train, only to be cut to pieces by the down express, whose very existence she had forgotten.

Her eyes fastened themselves upon one object. Presently she found that it was Mrs. Teesdale’s pebble brooch. Her ears rang with a harsh, shrill voice; it took her mind some moments to capture the words and grasp their meaning.

“You wicked, wicked, ungrateful woman! To dare to come here and pass yourself off as Miriam Oliver, and live with us all these weeks – you lying hussy! If you have anything to say for yourself be sharp and say it, then out you pack!”

The convicted girl now beheld the verandah swimming with people. As her sight cleared, however, she could only count four, including Mrs. Teesdale. There was the veritable Miss Oliver, but Missy took no note of her just then. There was Arabella, white and weeping; and there was Mr. Teesdale, looking years older since the morning, with the saddest expression Missy had ever seen upon human countenance. He was gazing, not at her, but down upon the ground at her feet. John William was not there at all. Missy looked about for him very wistfully, but in vain; and her glance ended, where it had begun, upon the furious face of Mrs. Teesdale. Furious as it was, the wretched girl found it much the easiest face to meet with a firm lip and a brazen front.

“Do you know that you could be sent to prison?” Mrs. Teesdale proceeded, still at a scream. “Ay, and I’ll see that you are sent, and all!”

“Nay, come!” muttered Mr. Teesdale, shaking his head at the grass, but without looking at anybody.

Then suddenly he lifted his eyes, stepped down from the verandah, and went up to Missy.

“Missy,” said he, in a low, hoarse voice, “Missy, I’ll take your word as soon as the word of a person I’ve never set eyes on before. Is this true, or is it not? Are you, or are you not, Miriam Oliver, the daughter of my old friend?”

“It is true,” said Missy. “I’m no more Miriam Oliver than you are.”

Neither question nor answer had reached the ears of those in the verandah. But they saw David turn towards them with his head hanging lower than before, and he tottered as he rejoined them. Miss Oliver, however, may have guessed what had passed, for she smiled a supercilious smile which no one happened to observe. This young lady was a contrast to her impersonator in every imaginable way. She was not nearly so tall, and she had exceedingly fair hair. Her nose was tip-tilted to begin with, but she seemed to have a habit of turning it up even beyond the design of nature. This was perhaps justified on the present occasion. She was very fashionably dressed in a costume of extremely light gray; and in the dilapidated framework of the old verandah she was by far the most incongruous figure upon the scene.

“Has she anything to say for herself?” Mrs. Teesdale demanded of her husband. He shook his head despondently.

And then, at last, Missy opened her mouth.

“I have only this to say for myself. It isn’t much, but Mr. Teesdale will tell you that it’s the truth. It’s only that I did do my level best to make a clean breast to him last night.”

“She did!” exclaimed the old man, after a moment’s rapid consideration. “Now I see what she meant. To think that I never saw then!”

“You were very dense,” said Missy; “but not worse than John William. I did my best to tell you last night, and I did my best to tell him only this morning, but neither of you would understand.”

As she spoke to the old man her voice was strangely gentle, and a smile was hovering about the corners of her mouth when she ceased. Moreover, her words had brought out a faint ray of light upon Mr. Teesdale’s dejected mien.

“It’s a fact!” he cried, turning to the others. “She did her best to confess last night. She did confess. I remember all about it now. It was a full confession, if only I’d put two and two together. But – well, I never could have believed it of her. That was it!”

He finished on a sufficiently reproachful note.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Teesdale turned upon him as fiercely as though he had spoken from a brief in Missy’s defence.

“What if she had confessed? I’m ashamed of you, David, going on as though that could ha’ made any difference! She’d still have deceived us and lied to us all these weeks. Black is black and this – this woman – is that black that God Himself couldn’t whiten her!”

And Mrs. Teesdale shook her fist at the guilty girl.

“We have none of us a right to say that,” murmured David.

“But I do say it, and I mean it, too. I say that she’d still have stolen Miriam’s letter of introduction, and come here deliberately and passed herself off as Miriam, and slept under our roof, and eaten-our bread, under false pretences – false pretences as shall put her in prison if I have anything to do with it! No confession could have undone all that; and no confession shall keep her out of prison neither, not if I know it!”

Some of them were expecting Missy to take to her heels any moment; but she never showed the least sign of doing so.

“No, nothing can undo it,” she said herself. “I’ve known that for some time, and I shan’t be sorry to pay the cost.”

Then the real Miss Oliver put in her word. It was winged with a sneer.

“It was hardly a compliment,” she said, “to take her for me! You might ask her, by the way, when and where she stole my letters. I lost several.” She could not permit herself to address the culprit direct.

“I’ll tell you that,” said Missy, “and everything else too, if you like to listen.”

“Do, Missy!” cried Arabella, speaking also for the first time. “And then I’ll tell them something.”

“Be sharp, then,” said Mrs. Teesdale. “We’re not going to stand here much longer listening to the likes of you. If you’ve got much to say, you’d better keep it for the magistrate!”

Missy shook her head at Arabella, stared briefly but boldly at Mrs. Teesdale, and then addressed herself to the fair girl in gray, who raised her eyebrows at the liberty.

“You remember the morning after you landed in the Parramatta? It was a very hot day, about a couple of months ago, but in the forenoon you went for a walk with a lady friend. And you took the Fitzroy Gardens on your way.”

Miss Oliver nodded, without thinking whom she was nodding to. This was because she had become very much interested all in a moment; the next, she regretted that nod, and set herself to listen with a fixed expression of disgust.

“You walked through the Fitzroy Gardens, you stopped to look at all the statues, and then you sat down on a seat. I saw you, because I was sitting on the next seat. You sat on that seat, and you took out some letters and read bits of them to your friend. I could hear your voices, but I couldn’t hear what you were saying, and I didn’t want to, either. I had my own things to think about, and they weren’t very nice thinking, I can tell you! That hot morning, I remember, I was just wishing and praying to get out of Melbourne for good and all. And when I passed your seat after you’d left it, there were your letters lying under it on the gravel. I picked them up, and I looked up and down for you and your friend. You were out of sight, but I made for the entrance and waited for you there. Yes, I did – you may sneer as much as you like! But you never came, and when I went back to my lodgings I took your letters with me.”

Still the young lady sneered without speaking, and Missy hardened her heart.

“I read them every one,” she said defiantly. “I had nothing to do with myself during the day, and very good reading they were! And in the afternoon, just for the lark of it, I took your letter of introduction, which was among the rest, and then I took the ‘bus and came out here.”

She turned now to David, and continued in that softer voice which she could not help when speaking to him.

“It was only for the fun of it! I had no idea of ever coming out again. But you made so much of me; you were all so kind – and the place – it was heaven to a girl like me!”

Here she surprised them all, but one, by breaking down. Mr. Teesdale was not astonished. When she recovered her self-control it was to him she turned her swimming eyes; it was the look in his that enabled her to go on.

“If you knew what my life was!” she wailed; “if you knew how I hated it! If you knew how I longed to come out into the country, when I saw what the country was like! I had never seen your Australian country before. It was all new to me. I had only been a year out from home, but at home I lived all my life in London. My God, what a life! But I never meant to come back to you – I said I wouldn’t – and then I said you must take the consequences if I did. Even when I said good-bye to you, Mr. Teesdale, I never really thought of coming back; so you see I repaid your kindness not only by lies, but by robbing you – ”

She pulled herself up. David had glanced uneasily towards his wife. The girl understood.

“By robbing you of your peace of mind, for I said that I would come back, never meaning to at all. And now do you know why I was in such a hurry to get to the theatre? Yes, it was because I had an engagement there. All the rest was lies. And I never should have come out to you again, only at last I saw in the Argus that she – that Miss Oliver – had gone to Sydney. Don’t you remember how you’d seen it too? Well, then I felt safe. I was only a ballet-girl, I’d done better once, for at home I’d had a try in the halls. So I chucked it up and came out to you. I thought I should see in the Argus when Miss Oliver came back from Sydney, but somehow I’ve missed it. And now – ”

She flung wide her arms, and raised her eyes, and looked from the sky overhead to the river-timber away down to the right, and from the river-timber to David Teesdale.

“And now you may put me in prison as fast as you like. I’ve been here two months. They’re well worth twelve of hard labour, these last two months on this farm!”

She had finished.

Mrs. Teesdale turned to her husband. “The brazen slut!” she cried. “Not a word of penitence! She doesn’t care – not she! To prison she shall go, and we’ll see whether that makes her care.”