“Ah, Joan,” said Mrs. Joscelyn, wringing her thin hands, “you can laugh, but I feel a great deal more like crying. I can think upon nothing but my poor boy.”
“Well, mother,” said Joan, “crying is not my line. I’ll not pretend to more; but it’s just as well there is one of us that can laugh, or what would become of us both I don’t know. Take your tea; it will be quite cold; and lie still and get a rest. The very first news I have I will bring you, and you’re far better out of the way if you’ll take my advice.”
“I wish I was out of the way altogether. I wish I were in my grave. When I was young I could bear it, but now my heart’s failed me. Oh, I just wish that once for all I was out of the way!”
“You make too much fuss, mother,” said Joan. “I am always telling you. If you could take things easy it would be far better. Out of the way! and what would Liddy do, poor little pet, when she comes home?”
“Ah, Liddy!” The mother breathed out this name with a softened expression; here was still a last hope that had not been torn from her. Joan for her part went out of the room briskly, but stood and gazed out of the window on the landing, which looked towards the village, holding her hands very tightly clasped, and looking for the return of the messenger whom she would not acknowledge to have sent. “Ah, Liddy,” she said to herself, “she’ll be just such another as mother herself, and what will I do between them? but I wish old Simon would come back with some news of that boy.”
Simon went down to the village, stooping over his stick and laden with his big basket with a crab-like progression, which, nevertheless, was by no means slow. There were few people to be met on the road, children going to school for the most part, with whom he was no favourite, and who called out little taunts after him when they were far enough off to be safe from pursuit. He was not an amiable old man, but unless an urchin came in his way he did not attempt to take any vengeance. “Little scum o’ t’ earth,” he would say, shaking his fist, but that amused and stimulated instead of alarming the youngsters. The village was mildly astir, wrapped in a haze of morning sunshine; the better houses opening up by degrees; the cottages all open to the sweet yet chill air of the spring morning. At the “Red Lion” all was already in activity, doors and windows open to carry off the heavy fumes of beer and tobacco left by last night’s customers. Simon went in and rested his big basket on the bar table. The ostler in the yard was making a great noise with his pails, the women were brushing and scrubbing upstairs, and talking to each other in harsh unmodulated rustic voices, and the mistress was busy in her bar arranging and dusting the array of bottles which was its chief decoration. “Is that you, Simon?” she said, and “It’s just me,” was the old man’s answer; no ceremonial greeting was necessary. “I’ve brought you th’ butter,” Simon said. “When it’s a fine colour and extra good, I like to get the credit of ’t mysel’.”