“You wouldn’t have her back though,” she said gently, turning towards the speaker.

“No, I wouldn’t have her back, miss,” said Mrs. Brunt, raising her hand to brush away a tear, partly the result of feeling, partly of a long-established habit.  “But I do miss her nights terrible!  ’Mother, ain’t it ten o’clock?—­mother, look at the clock, do, mother—­ain’t it time for my stuff, mother—­oh, I do hope it is.’  That was her stuff, miss, to make her sleep.  And when she’d got it, she’d groan—­you’d think she couldn’t be asleep, and yet she was, dead-like—­for two hours.  I didn’t get no rest with her, and now I don’t seem to get no rest without her.”

And again Mrs. Brunt put her hand up to her eyes.

“Ah, you were allus one for toilin’ an’ frettin’,” said Mrs. Jellison, calmly.  “A body must get through wi’ it when it’s there, but I don’t hold wi’ thinkin’ about it when it’s done.”

“I know one,” said old Patton, slily, “that fretted about her darter when it didn’t do her no good.”

He had not spoken so far, but had sat with his hands on his stick, a spectator of the women’s humours.  He was a little hunched man, twisted and bent double with rheumatic gout, the fruit of seventy years of field work.  His small face was almost lost, dog-like, under shaggy hair and overgrown eyebrows, both snow-white.  He had a look of irritable eagerness, seldom, however, expressed in words.  A sudden passion in the faded blue eyes; a quick spot of red in his old cheeks; these Marcella had often noticed in him, as though the flame of some inner furnace leapt.  He had been a Radical and a rebel once in old rick-burning days, long before he lost the power in his limbs and came down to be thankful for one of the parish almshouses.  To his social betters he was now a quiet and peaceable old man, well aware of the cakes and ale to be got by good manners; but in the depths of him there were reminiscences and the ghosts of passions, which were still stirred sometimes by causes not always intelligible to the bystander.

He had rarely, however, physical energy enough to bring any emotion—­even of mere worry at his physical ills—­to the birth.  The pathetic silence of age enwrapped him more and more.  Still he could gibe the women sometimes, especially Mrs. Jellison, who was in general too clever for her company.

“Oh, you may talk, Patton!” said Mrs. Jellison, with a little flash of excitement.  “You do like to have your talk, don’t you!  Well, I dare say I was orkard with Isabella.  I won’t go for to say I wasn’t orkard, for I was.  She should ha’ used me to ’t before, if she wor took that way.  She and I had just settled down comfortable after my old man went, and I didn’t see no sense in it, an’ I don’t now.  She might ha’ let the men alone.  She’d seen enough o’ the worrit ov ’em.”

“Well, she did well for hersen,” said Mrs. Brunt, with the same gentle melancholy.  “She married a stiddy man as ’ull keep her well all her time, and never let her want for nothink.”