’Not that I iver believed that foolish yoong mon as wrote me that Dick wor dead,’ he said, contemptuously.  ’Bit it’s as weel to git things clear.’

Nelly heartily agreed, adding—­

’I may be going to London next week, Mr. Backhouse.  You say your son will be in the London Hospital.  Shall I go and see him?’

Backhouse looked at her cautiously.

‘I doan’t know, Mum.  His moother will be goin’, likely.’

‘Oh, I don’t want to intrude, Mr. Backhouse.  But if she doesn’t go?’

’Well, Mum; I will say you’ve a pleasant coontenance, though yo’re not juist sich a thrivin’ body as a’d like to see yer.  But theer’s mony people as du more harm nor good by goin’ to sit wi’ sick foak.’

Nelly meekly admitted it; and then she suggested that she might be the bearer of anything Mrs. Backhouse would like to send her son—­clothes, for instance?  The old man thawed rapidly, and the three, Nelly, Tommy, and Father Time, were soon sincerely enjoying each other’s society, when a woman in a grey tweed costume, and black sailor hat, arrived at the top of a little hill in the road outside the garden, from which the farm and its surroundings could be seen.

At the sight of the group in front of the farm, she came to an abrupt pause, and hidden from them by a projecting corner of wall she surveyed the scene—­Nelly, with Tommy on her knee, and the old labourer who had just shouldered his scythe again, and was about to go on his way.

It was Bridget Cookson, who had been to Kendal for the day, and had walked over from Grasmere, where the char-a-banc, alias the ’Yellow Peril,’ had deposited her.  She had passed the Post Office on her way, and had brought thence a letter which she held in her hand.  Her face was pale and excited.  She stood thinking; her eyes on Nelly, her lips moving as though she were rehearsing some speech or argument.

Then when she had watched old Backkhouse make his farewell, and turn towards the gate, she hastily opened a black silk bag hanging from her wrist, and thrust the letter into it.

After which she walked on, meeting the old man in the lane, and run into by Tommy, who, head foremost, was rushing home to shew his glorious Haggan to his ‘mummy.’

Nelly’s face at sight of her sister stiffened insensibly.

’Aren’t you very tired, Bridget?  Have you walked all the way?  Yes, you do look tired!  Have you had tea?’

‘Yes, at Windermere.’

Bridget cleared the chair on which Nelly had placed her paint-box, and sat down.  She was silent a little and then said abruptly—­

‘It’s a horrid bore, I shall have to go to London again.’

‘Again?’ Nelly’s look of surprise was natural.  Bridget had returned from another long stay in the Bloomsbury boarding-house early in October, and it was now only the middle of the month.  But Bridget’s doings were always a great mystery to Nelly.  She was translating something from the Spanish—­that was all Nelly knew—­and also, that when an offer had been made to her through a friend, of some translating work for the Foreign Office, she had angrily refused it.  She would not, she said, be a slave to any public office.