“I’ll put my bonnet on and set off directly, if you don’t want anything done first, Aunt,” said Dinah, folding up her work.

“Yes, I do want something done.  I want you t’ have your tea, child; it’s all ready—­and you’ll have a cup, Adam, if y’ arena in too big a hurry.”

“Yes, I’ll have a cup, please; and then I’ll walk with Dinah.  I’m going straight home, for I’ve got a lot o’ timber valuations to write out.”

“Why, Adam, lad, are you here?” said Mr. Poyser, entering warm and coatless, with the two black-eyed boys behind him, still looking as much like him as two small elephants are like a large one.  “How is it we’ve got sight o’ you so long before foddering-time?”

“I came on an errand for Mother,” said Adam.  “She’s got a touch of her old complaint, and she wants Dinah to go and stay with her a bit.”

“Well, we’ll spare her for your mother a little while,” said Mr. Poyser.  “But we wonna spare her for anybody else, on’y her husband.”

“Husband!” said Marty, who was at the most prosaic and literal period of the boyish mind.  “Why, Dinah hasn’t got a husband.”

“Spare her?” said Mrs. Poyser, placing a seed-cake on the table and then seating herself to pour out the tea.  “But we must spare her, it seems, and not for a husband neither, but for her own megrims.  Tommy, what are you doing to your little sister’s doll?  Making the child naughty, when she’d be good if you’d let her.  You shanna have a morsel o’ cake if you behave so.”

Tommy, with true brotherly sympathy, was amusing himself by turning Dolly’s skirt over her bald head and exhibiting her truncated body to the general scorn—­an indignity which cut Totty to the heart.

“What do you think Dinah’s been a-telling me since dinner-time?” Mrs. Poyser continued, looking at her husband.

“Eh!  I’m a poor un at guessing,” said Mr. Poyser.

“Why, she means to go back to Snowfield again, and work i’ the mill, and starve herself, as she used to do, like a creatur as has got no friends.”

Mr. Poyser did not readily find words to express his unpleasant astonishment; he only looked from his wife to Dinah, who had now seated herself beside Totty, as a bulwark against brotherly playfulness, and was busying herself with the children’s tea.  If he had been given to making general reflections, it would have occurred to him that there was certainly a change come over Dinah, for she never used to change colour; but, as it was, he merely observed that her face was flushed at that moment.  Mr. Poyser thought she looked the prettier for it:  it was a flush no deeper than the petal of a monthly rose.  Perhaps it came because her uncle was looking at her so fixedly; but there is no knowing, for just then Adam was saying, with quiet surprise, “Why, I hoped Dinah was settled among us for life.  I thought she’d given up the notion o’ going back to her old country.”

“Thought!  Yes,” said Mrs. Poyser, “and so would anybody else ha’ thought, as had got their right end up’ards.  But I suppose you must be a Methodist to know what a Methodist ’ull do.  It’s ill guessing what the bats are flying after.”