Between the sobs Essy looked up with her shining eyes.  She whispered.

“Will yo kape mae, Moother?”

“I sail ‘ave t’ kape yo.  There’s nawbody ’ll keer mooch fer thot job but yore moother.”

But Essy still wept.  Once started on the way of weeping, she couldn’t stop.

Then, all of a sudden, Mrs. Gale’s face became distorted.

She got up and put her hand heavily on her daughter’s shoulder.

“There, there, Assy, loove,” she said.  “Doan’ tha taake on thot road.  It’s doon, an’ it caann’t be oondoon.”

She stood there in a heavy silence.  Now and again she patted the heaving shoulder, marking time to Essy’s sobs.  Then she spoke.

“Tha’ll feel batter whan t’ lil baaby cooms.”

Profoundly disturbed and resentful of her own emotion Mrs. Gale seized upon the tea-pot as a pretext and shut herself up with it in the scullery.

* * * * *

Essy, staggering, rose and dried her eyes.  For a moment or so she stared idly at the square window with the blue-black night behind it.

Then she looked down.  She smiled faintly.  One by one she took the little garments spread out in front of her.  She folded them in a pile.

Her face was still and dreamy.

She opened the scullery door and looked in.

“Good-night, Moother.”

“Good-night, Assy.”

* * * * *

It was striking seven as she passed the church.

Above the strokes of the hour she heard through the half-open door a sound of organ playing and of a big voice singing.

And she began to weep again.  She knew the singer, and the player too.

XXVIII

Christmas was over and gone.

It was the last week in January.

All through December Rowcliffe’s visits to the Vicarage had continued.  But in January they ceased.  That was not to be wondered at.  Even Ally couldn’t wonder.  There was influenza in every other house in the Dale.

Then, one day, Gwenda, walking past Upthorne, heard wheels behind her and the clanking hoofs of the doctor’s horse.  She knew what would happen.  Rowcliffe would pull up a yard or two in front of her.  He would ask her where she was going and he would make her drive with him over the moor.  And she knew that she would go with him.  She would not be able to refuse him.

But the clanking hoofs went by and never stopped.  There were two men in the trap.  Acroyd, Rowcliffe’s groom, sat in Rowcliffe’s place, driving.  He touched his hat to her as he passed her.

Beside him there was a strange man.

She said to herself, “He’s away then.  I think he might have told me.”

And Ally, passing through the village, had seen the strange man too.

“Dr. Rowcliffe must be away,” she said at tea-time.  “I wonder if he’ll be back by Wednesday.”