She fetched a great sigh and folded her hands resignedly.  As she was passing him to make her miserable enforced exit, the heavy severity of his face afflicted her with a deep alarm; she fell on her knees, crying,—­

“Oh, William! it ain’t for sake of hearin’ talk; but you, that went to see our Dahly, the blossom, ’ve come back streaky under the eyes, and you make the house feel as if we neighboured Judgement Day.  Down to tea you set the first moment, and me alone with none of you, and my love for my girl known well to you.  And now to be marched off!  How can I go a-bed and sleep, and my heart jumps so?  It ain’t Christian to ask me to.  I got a heart, dear, I have.  Do give a bit of comfort to it.  Only a word of my Dahly to me.”

The farmer replied:  “Mother, let’s have no woman’s nonsense.  What we’ve got to bear, let us bear.  And you go on your knees to the Lord, and don’t be a heathen woman, I say.  Get up.  There’s a Bible in your bedroom.  Find you out comfort in that.”

“No, William, no!” she sobbed, still kneeling:  “there ain’t a dose o’ comfort there when poor souls is in the dark, and haven’t got patience for passages.  And me and my Bible!—­how can I read it, and not know my ailing, and a’stract one good word, William?  It’ll seem only the devil’s shootin’ black lightnings across the page, as poor blessed granny used to say, and she believed witches could do it to you in her time, when they was evil-minded.  No!  To-night I look on the binding of the Holy Book, and I don’t, and I won’t, I sha’ n’t open it.”

This violent end to her petition was wrought by the farmer grasping her arm to bring her to her feet.

“Go to bed, mother.”

“I shan’t open it,” she repeated, defiantly.  “And it ain’t,” she gathered up her comfortable fat person to assist the words “it ain’t good—­no, not the best pious ones—­I shall, and will say it! as is al’ays ready to smack your face with the Bible.”

“Now, don’t ye be angry,” said the farmer.

She softened instantly.

“William, dear, I got fifty-seven pounds sterling, and odd shillings, in a Savings-bank, and that I meant to go to Dahly, and not to yond’ dark thing sitting there so sullen, and me in my misery; I’d give it to you now for news of my darlin’.  Yes, William; and my poor husband’s cottage, in Sussex—­seventeen pound per annum.  That, if you’ll be goodness itself, and let me hear a word.”

“Take her upstairs,” said the farmer to Rhoda, and Rhoda went by her and took her hands, and by dint of pushing from behind and dragging in front, Mrs. Sumfit, as near on a shriek as one so fat and sleek could be, was ejected.  The farmer and Robert heard her struggles and exclamations along the passage, but her resistance subsided very suddenly.

“There’s power in that girl,” said the farmer, standing by the shut door.

Robert thought so, too.  It affected his imagination, and his heart began to beat sickeningly.