"Lie quiet, Mercy," said Greta; "it will be gone to-morrow."
"Go-on," echoed the little chap, and pointed out at the window.
"The darling, how he picks up every word!" said Greta.
"He means the horse," explained Mercy.
"Go-on--man--go-on," prattled the little one, with a child"s indifference to all conversation except his own.
"Bless the love, he must remember the doctor and his horse," said Greta.
Mercy was putting her lips to the scratch on the little hand.
"Oh, Greta, I am very childish; but a mother"s heart melts like b.u.t.ter."
"Batter," echoed the child, and wriggled out of Greta"s arms to the ground, where he forthwith clambered on to the stool, and possessed himself of a slice of bread which lay on the table at the bedside. Then the fair curly head disappeared like a glint of sunlight through the door to the kitchen.
"What shall I care if other mothers see my child? I shall see him, too,"
said Mercy, and she sighed. "Yes," she added softly, "his hands and his eyes and his feet and his soft hair."
"Try to sleep an hour or two, dear," said Greta, "and then perhaps you may get up this afternoon--only perhaps, you know, but we"ll see."
"Yes, Greta, yes. How kind you are."
"You will be far kinder to me some day," said Greta, very tenderly.
"No--ah, yes, I remember. How very selfish I am--I had quite forgotten.
But then it is so hard not to be selfish when you are a mother. Only fancy, I never think of myself as Mercy now. No, never. I"m just Ralphie"s mamma. When Ralphie came, Mercy must have died in some way.
That"s very silly, isn"t it? Only it does seem true."
"Man--go-on--batter," was heard from the kitchen, mingled with the patter of tiny feet.
"Listen to him. How tricksome he is! And you should hear him cry, "Oh!"
You would say, "That child has had an eye knocked out." And then, in a minute, behold! he"s laughing once more. There, I"m selfish again; but I will make up for it some day, if G.o.d is good."
"Yes, Mercy, He is good," said Greta.
Her arms rested on the door-jamb, and her head dropped on to it; her eyes swam. Did it seem at that moment as if G.o.d had been very good to these two women?
"Greta," said Mercy, and her voice fell to a whisper, "do you think Ralphie is like--anybody?"
"Yes, dear, he is like you."
There was a pause. Then Mercy"s hand strayed from under the bedclothes and plucked at Greta"s gown.
"Do you think," she asked, in a voice all but inaudible, "that father knows who it is?"
"I can not say--we have never told him."
"Nor I--he never asked, never once--only, you know, he gave up his work at the mine, and went back to the charcoal-pit when Ralphie came. But he never said a word."
Greta did not answer. There was another pause. Then Mercy said, in a stronger voice, "Will it be soon--the trial?"
"As soon as your eyes are better," said Greta, earnestly; "everything depends on your recovery."
At that moment the bedroom door was pushed open with a little lordly bang, and the great wee man entered with his piece of bread stuck rather insecurely on one p.r.o.ng of a fork.
"Toas," he explained complacently, "toas," and walked up to the empty grate and stretched his arm over the fender at the cold bars.
"Why, there"s no fire for toast, you darling goose," said Greta, catching him in her arms, much to his masculine vexation.
Mercy had risen on an elbow, and her face was full of the yearning of the blind. Then she lay back.
"Never mind," she said to herself in a faltering voice, "let me lie quiet and think of all his pretty ways."
CHAPTER VII.
Greta returned to the vicarage toward noon, and overtook Parson Christian and Peter in the lonnin, the one carrying a scythe over his shoulder, the other a bundle of rushes under his one arm. The parson was walking in silence under the noontide sun, his straw hat tipped back from his forehead and his eyes on the ground. He was busy with his own reflections. It was not until Greta had tripped up to his side and slipped his scythe-stone from its strap in the pole that the parson was awakened from his reverie.
"Great news, Greta--great news, my la.s.s!" he said in answer to her liberal tender in exchange for his thoughts. "How well it"s said, that he that diggeth a pit for another should look that he fall not into it himself."
"What news, Mr. Christian?" said Greta, and her color heightened.
"Well, we"ve been mowing the gra.s.s in the church-yard, Peter and I, and the scythe is old like ourselves, and it wanted tempering. So away we went to the smithy to have it ground, and who should come up but Robbie Atkinson, leading ha.s.socks from Longridge. And Robbie would fain have us go with him and be cheerful at the Flying Horse. Well, we"d each had a pot of ale and milk, when in came Natt, the stableman at Ritson"s, all lather like one of his horses after his master has been astride her. And Natt was full of a great quarrel at the Ghyll, wherein young Mr. Hugh had tried to turn yonder man out of the house in the way I told you of before, but the man denied that he was what Hugh called him, and clung to it that he was Paul Ritson, and brought doc.u.ments to show that Paul was his father"s rightful heir, after all."
"Well, well?" asked Greta, breathlessly.
Peter had shambled on to the house.
"Well, Natt is no very trustworthy chronicler, I fear, but one thing is plain, and that is, that Mr. Hugh, who thought to turn yon man out of the house, has been turned out of it himself."
Greta stood in the road, trembling from head to foot.
"My poor husband!" she said in a whisper. Then came a torrent of questions. "When did this happen? What think you will come of it? Where will Hugh go? What will he do? Ah, Mr. Christian, you always said the cruel instrument would turn in his hand!"
There was a step behind them. In their anxiety they had not noticed it until it was close at their heels. They turned, and were face to face with Mr. Bonnithorne.
The lawyer bowed, but before they had exchanged the courtesies of welcome, a horse"s tramp came from the road, and in a moment Drayton rode up the lonnin. His face was flushed, and his manner noisy as he leaped from the saddle into their midst.
Greta lifted one hand to her breast, and with the other hand she clasped that of the parson. The old man"s face grew rigid in an instant, and all the mellowness natural to it died away.
Drayton made up to Greta and the parson with an air of braggadocio.
"I"ve come to tell you once for all that my wife must live under my roof."