Its passionless emptiness now filled her with pity and horror.  She sat down beside the widow and took her hand.  Mrs. Westall allowed it for a moment, then drew her own away suddenly, and Marcella saw a curious and sinister contraction of the eyes.

“Ah! yo never know how much Isabella unnerstan’s, an’ how much she don’t,” Mrs. Jellison was saying to Mary.  “I can’t allus make her out, but she don’t give no trouble.  An’ as for that boy, he’s a chirruper, he is.  He gives ’em fine times at school, he do.  Miss Barton, she ast him in class, Thursday, ’bout Ananias and Sappira.  ‘Johnnie,’ says she, ’whatever made ’em do sich a wicked thing?’ ‘Well, I do’n’ know,’ says he; ‘it was jus’ their nassty good-for-nothink,’ says he; ’but they was great sillies,’ says he.  Oh! he don’t mean no harm!—­lor’ bless yer, the men is all born contrary, and they can’t help themselves.  Oh! thank yer, miss, my ’ealth is pretty tidy, though I ’ave been plagued this winter with a something they call the ’flenzy.  I wor very bad!  ’Yo go to bed, Mrs. Jellison,’ says Dr. Sharpe, ‘or yo’ll know of it.’  But I worn’t goin’ to be talked to by ’im.  Why, I knowed ’im when he wor no ‘igher nor Johnnie.  An’ I kep’ puddlin’ along, an’ one mornin’ I wor fairly choked, an’ I just crawled into that parlour, an’ I took a sup o’ brandy out o’ the bottle”—­she looked complacently at Mary, quite conscious that the Rector’s sister must be listening to her with disapproving ears—­“an’, lor’ bless yer, it cut the phlegm, it did, that very moment.  My!  I did cough.  I drawed it up by the yard, I did—­and I crep’ back along the wall, and yo cud ha’ knocked me down wi’ one o’ my own straws.  But I’ve been better iver since, an’ beginnin’ to eat my vittles, too, though I’m never no great pecker—­I ain’t—­not at no time.”

Mary managed to smother her emotions on the subject of the brandy, and the old woman chattered on, throwing out the news of the village in a series of humorous fragments, tinged in general with the lowest opinion of human nature.

When the girls took leave of her, she said slily to Marcella: 

“An’ ‘ow about your plaitin’, miss?—­though I dessay I’m a bold ’un for astin’.”

Marcella coloured.

“Well, I’ve got it to think about, Mrs. Jellison.  We must have a meeting in the village and talk it over one of these days.”

The old woman nodded in a shrewd silence, and watched them depart.

“Wull, I reckon Jimmy Gedge ull lasst my time,” she said to herself with a chuckle.

* * * * *

If Mrs. Jellison had this small belief in the powers of the new mistress of Mellor over matters which, according to her, had been settled generations ago by “the Lord and natur’,” Marcella certainly was in no mood to contradict her.  She walked through the village on her return scanning everything about her—­the slatternly girls plaiting on the doorsteps, the children in the lane, the loungers round the various “publics,” the labourers, old and young, who touched their caps to her—­with a moody and passionate eye.