“Do you hear any one crying?” she said.

Martha suddenly looked confused.

“No,” she answered.  “It’s th’ wind.  Sometimes it sounds like as if some one was lost on th’ moor an’ wailin’.  It’s got all sorts o’ sounds.”

“But listen,” said Mary.  “It’s in the house—­down one of those long corridors.”

And at that very moment a door must have been opened somewhere down-stairs; for a great rushing draft blew along the passage and the door of the room they sat in was blown open with a crash, and as they both jumped to their feet the light was blown out and the crying sound was swept down the far corridor so that it was to be heard more plainly than ever.

“There!” said Mary.  “I told you so!  It is some one crying—­and it isn’t a grown-up person.”

Martha ran and shut the door and turned the key, but before she did it they both heard the sound of a door in some far passage shutting with a bang, and then everything was quiet, for even the wind ceased “wutherin’” for a few moments.

“It was th’ wind,” said Martha stubbornly.  “An’ if it wasn’t, it was little Betty Butterworth, th’ scullery-maid.  She’s had th’ toothache all day.”

But something troubled and awkward in her manner made Mistress Mary stare very hard at her.  She did not believe she was speaking the truth.

CHAPTER VI

“THERE WAS SOME ONE CRYING—­THERE WAS!”

The next day the rain poured down in torrents again, and when Mary looked out of her window the moor was almost hidden by gray mist and cloud.  There could be no going out to-day.

“What do you do in your cottage when it rains like this?” she asked Martha.

“Try to keep from under each other’s feet mostly,” Martha answered.  “Eh! there does seem a lot of us then.  Mother’s a good-tempered woman but she gets fair moithered.  The biggest ones goes out in th’ cow-shed and plays there.  Dickon he doesn’t mind th’ wet.  He goes out just th’ same as if th’ sun was shinin’.  He says he sees things on rainy days as doesn’t show when it’s fair weather.  He once found a little fox cub half drowned in its hole and he brought it home in th’ bosom of his shirt to keep it warm.  Its mother had been killed nearby an’ th’ hole was swum out an’ th’ rest o’ th’ litter was dead.  He’s got it at home now.  He found a half-drowned young crow another time an’ he brought it home, too, an’ tamed it.  It’s named Soot because it’s so black, an’ it hops an’ flies about with him everywhere.”

The time had come when Mary had forgotten to resent Martha’s familiar talk.  She had even begun to find it interesting and to be sorry when she stopped or went away.  The stories she had been told by her Ayah when she lived in India had been quite unlike those Martha had to tell about the moorland cottage which held fourteen people who lived in four little rooms and never had quite enough to eat.  The children seemed to tumble about and amuse themselves like a litter of rough, good-natured collie puppies.  Mary was most attracted by the mother and Dickon.  When Martha told stories of what “mother” said or did they always sounded comfortable.