“Am I to stay?” asked Leam, turning to Mr. Gryce with a certain forced humility which showed how much it cost her to submit.

“Yes,” he answered, less cheerfully and more authoritatively than was his manner at North Aston, speaking without a lisp and with a full Cumberland accent.  “It is the best thing I can do for you—­all I have to offer.”

To which Leam bent her sad head with pathetic patience—­pathetic indeed to those who knew the proud spirit that it reported broken and humbled for ever.  Following the red-armed, touzled, ragged maid to the dingy cabin that was to be her room, she left her friend to explain to his sister, so far as he chose and could, the necessity under which he found himself of leaving his adopted daughter, Leonora Darley, in her care for a week or two, until such time as he should return and claim her.

“Your adopted daughter?  God bless my soul, man! but you are the daftest donnet I ever saw on two legs!” cried Keziah, snatching up the coarse gray knitting which was the sole unanchored circumstance in the room and casting off her heel viciously.  “What call had you to adopt a daughter—­you with never a wife to mother her nor a house of your own to take her to?  For I reckon nowt of your furnished houses here and your beggarly apartments there, as you know.  And now you can do nothing better than bring her here to fash the life out of me before the week’s over!  But that’s always the way with you men.  You talk precious big, but it’s mighty little you put your hands to; and when you hack out yokes for which you get a deal of praise, you take care not to bear them on your own backs.  It’s us women who have to do that.”

“One would have supposed you would have liked a pretty young thing like that in the house.  You are lonesome enough here, and it makes a little life,” said Emmanuel quietly.

He knew his sister Keziah, and that she must have her head when the talking fit was on her.

“‘A pretty young thing like that!’” she repeated scornfully.  “Lord love you, born cuddy as you are!  What’s her good looks to me, I wonder, but a pound spent on a looking-glass, and Jenny taken off her work to make cakes and butter-sops for her dainty teeth?  We’ll have all the men-folk too havering round to see which of ’em may have the honor of ruining himself for my fine lady.  And I’ll not have it, I tell ye.  I’ll not have my house turned into a fair, with madam there as the show.  Life! what do I want with ‘life’ about me, or you either, Emmanuel?  I’ve got my right foot in the grave, and I reckon yours is not far off; and what we’ve both got to do now is to see that we make a good ending for our souls.”

“At all events, you don’t refuse to take her for a week or two?” asked Emmanuel innocently.

“Did I say I refused?  Did I send her up stairs as the nighest road to the street-door?” retorted his sister with disdain.  “Did I not tell you, as plain as tongue could speak, that she is welcome to her bit and sup, and I’ll pass the time away for her in the best way I can, though bad is the best, I reckon?”