The last words were said with biting contempt, and the women sat silent and sipped their tea approvingly. But old Peter had different views concerning the "other one" alluded to, and he again made the effort to interrupt.
"Eh, lad, but you be proper hard upon poor Miss Norah, proper hard you be, for sure. I wouldn't be saying as ye haven't your reasons for it, but she seemed a quiet sort of maiden enough, what didn't mean no harm to speak of, and what's suffered enough for her foolishness, I'll be bound."
"I hope she has, I hope she has," exclaimed Roger, vehemently. "Those as comes with their sneaking ways tryin' for to corrupt honest folk deserves to suffer for it. No one doan't know why she didn't come back when Mr. Raleigh sent that letter after her, and no one doan't know why she didn't even answer it; but you take my word for it, it was Providence as interposed and wouldn't have nothink to do with her, and it's Providence as opens the way now to Mr. Raleigh if he'd only see it, and not want Providence to come down from heaven and poke him into it, so to speak. Who be that coming across the street?"
"Why, that be Mr. Raleigh his own self, that be," exclaimed Lily Eliza, joyously, and then blushed for fear of another rebuke from her father. This time, however, she did not get it, for old Peter for business reasons was always anxious to propitiate the musician in the flying visits he paid them, and was far more concerned now in getting to the door in time to open it than in his daughter's back-slidings. Besides, he really liked the open-handed young fellow who paid up so regularly every quarter for the keep of his son without examining the items of the bill, who always came in with a smile and an outstretched hand, and was so inordinately grateful for the little they had done for the child.
"Well, Mrs. Haxtell, and how's the boy?" he cried with his cheery voice as he stood on the doorstep. "I've brought you a new kind of baccy to try, sir; hope the youngster has been behaving himself, eh? Ah, Roger, how does the world go with you? And where's my Sonny?"
"There, now, to think of his father coming so unfortunate like, and he that's never out at tea-time more than twice in a twelve-month," fussed the landlady, dusting three chairs in succession, and wondering how her back hair was bearing the exertion; "that do seem hard, that do; but there, Lady Relton she come down and asked so coaxing like for him to go that I couldn't find it in my heart to refuse her; but that be the first time I've let him out o' my sight this many weeks. And I'm sure I've been so doleful like all the time he's been gone that I won't never let him go again, that I won't; I kept on thinkin' somethin' was going to happen to the precious, and I wouldn't never see him again, and what would his father say then, when I'd promised to look after him like my own--there, Mr. Raleigh, I feel as if somethin' terrible might come to Master Sonny afore we set eyes on him again, that I do!"