“Come, mother, we’re keepin’ the gentleman standin’ all this time,” said Mary, suddenly recalled to a sense of her hospitable duties.  “Sit ye down, sir, and sup a cup o’ tea with us.  Kettle’s boilin’, isn’t it, mother?  You’re not in a hurry, are you, mester?”

“I reckon I can stop a twothree minutes,” said the man.

Mrs. Whiteside glanced at him sharply, and her mother clapped her hands together.

“Ye’re a Lancashire lad, for sure,” cried she; “ye speak just same as our own folks up on the moor yon.”

He hesitated for a moment.

“Aye, I’ll not deny the talk cooms natural to me,” he said.  “I thought I’d forgot it, but my tongue seems to turn to it when I get agate o’ talkin’ wi’ Lancashire folks.”

“I reckon you and our Will had many a crack together about the bonny North,” said Mrs. Rigby, as she spread the cloth, smoothing it carefully with her wrinkled hands.  “I’m fain to think my lad minds th’ owd place.  Eh, I doubt he’d be nigh broken-hearted if he knowed we had to leave it—­I like as if I could be glad to think he knows nought about it, poor lad.  He didn’t ever talk o’ coomin’ back, mester, did he?”

“He met think on’t,” said the visitor slowly, “if he could be sure of a welcome.  But he run away, you see, again his father’s will, an’ he wur allus reckoned a good-for-nothin’ kind o’ chap—­so he seemed to think.”

“Who said that?” cried the old woman, pausing with the teapot poised in mid-air, and reddening all over her withered face.

“Well, ‘twas a kind o’ notion he seemed to have, and o’ course, though it’s ill blamin’ the absent”—­here he uttered a queer little laugh—­“when all’s said and done he hasn’t acted so very well.  Any chap wi’ a heart in’s breast ‘ud ha’ took thought for his own mother, and ‘ud ha’ seen as she was kept comfortable an’ happy in her owd age, and not forced to shift to a strange place.”

“I’m sure,” put in Mrs. Whiteside indignantly, “I can’t think what you’re droppin’ hints o’ that mak’ for, sir.  A woman has to follow her husband, an’ when his business takes him to London he takes her too.  Doin’ very well, he is, i’ th’ coal business, an’ I’m sure I make my mother as comfortable an’ as happy as I can.  Turn London into the moorside is what I cannot do, an’ I’m not to be blamed for that.  As you said jest now if any one was to blame ’twas my brother.”

“Well, I’ll not have nobody blamin’ my lad,” cried the old woman.  “He’s not to be faulted for what he knowed nought about.  If he’d knowed I doubt it ‘ud ha’ been different.”

“That’s true,” interrupted the man; “if he’d knowed it ‘ud ha’ been different.  He’d ha’ kept his mother on the moor.  If he was to come back now he’d have her awhoam again afore aught were long.”

“Tis wonderful to hear you takin’ up wi’ that homely talk,” said Mrs. Whiteside, with a laugh, as she set a crusty loaf upon the table.  “It fair brings me back.  I scarce ever talk i’ th’ owd fashion now, wi’out ‘tis a twothree words now an’ then to please mother.  Pull up, sir.  Will ye pour out the tea, mother?  All’s ready now.”