LITMIR.BIZ

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surveyed the game, and, with deliberation moved. Alice pounced on him; with a leap of her knight she called, “Check!”

      “I didn’t see it — you may have the game now,” he said.

      “Beaten, my boy! — don’t crow over a woman any more. Stalemate — with flowers in your hair!”

      He put his hand to his head, and felt among his hair, and threw the flowers on the table.

      “Would you believe it —!” said the mother, coming into the room from the dairy.

      “What?” we all asked.

      “Nickie Ben’s been and eaten the sile-cloth. Yes! When I went to wash it, there sat Nickie Ben gulping, and wiping the froth off his whiskers.”

      George laughed loudly and heartily. He laughed till he was tired. Lettie looked and wondered when he would be done.

      “I imagined,” he gasped, “how he’d feel with half a yard of muslin creeping down his throttle.”

      This laughter was most incongruous. He went off into another burst. Alice laughed too — it was easy to infect her with laughter. Then the father began — and in walked Nickie Ben, stepping disconsolately — we all roared again, till the rafters shook. Only Lettie looked impatiently for the end. George swept his bare arms across the table, and the scattered little flowers fell broken to the ground.

      “Oh — what a shame!” exclaimed Lettie.

      “What?” said he, looking round. “Your flowers? Do you feel sorry for them? — You’re too tender-hearted; isn’t she, Cyril?”

      “Always was — for dumb animals, and things,” said I.

      “Don’t you wish you was a little dumb animal, Georgie?” said Alice.

      He smiled, putting away the chess-men.

      “Shall we go, dear?” said Lettie to Leslie.

      “If you are ready,” he replied, rising with alacrity.

      “I am tired,” she said plaintively.

      He attended to her with little tender solicitations.

      “Have we walked too far?” he asked.

      “No, it’s not that. No — it’s the snowdrops, and the man, and the children — and everything. I feel just a bit exhausted.” She kissed Alice, and Emily, and the mother.

      “Good night, Alice,” she said. “It’s not altogether my fault we’re strangers. You know — really — I’m just the same — really. Only you imagine, and then what can I do?”

      She said farewell to George, and looked at him through a quiver of suppressed tears.

      George was somewhat flushed with triumph over Lettie: She had gone home with tears shaken from her eyes unknown to her lover; at the farm George laughed with Alice.

      We escorted Alice home to Eberwich —“Like a blooming little monkey dangling from two boughs,” as she put it, when we swung her along on our arms. We laughed and said many preposterous things. George wanted to kiss her at parting, but she tipped him under the chin and said, “Sweet!” as one does to a canary. Then she laughed with her tongue between her teeth, and ran indoors.

      “She is a little devil,” said he.

      We took the long way home by Greymede, and passed the dark schools.

      “Come on,” said he, “let’s go in the ‘Ram Inn’, and have a look at my cousin Meg.”

      It was half-past ten when he marched me across the road and into the sanded passage of the little inn. The place had been an important farm in the days of George’s grand-uncle, but since his decease it had declined, under the governance of the widow and a man-of-all-work. The old grand-aunt was propped and supported by a splendid granddaughter. The near kin of Meg were all in California, so she, a bonny delightful girl of twenty-four, stayed near her grandma.

      As we tramped grittily down the passage, the red head of Bill poked out of the bar, and he said as he recognised George: “Good ev’nin’— go forward —‘er’s non abed yit.”

      We went forward, and unlatched the kitchen door. The great-aunt was seated in her little, round-backed arm-chair sipping her “night-cap”.

      “Well, George, my lad!” she cried, in her querulous voice. “Tha’ niver says it’s thai, does ter? That’s com’n for summat, for sure, else what brings thee ter see me?”

      “No,” he said. “Ah’n corn ter see thee, nowt else. Wheer’s Meg?”

      “Ah! — Ha — Ha — Ah! — Me, did ter say? — come ter see me? — Ha — wheer’s Meg! — an’ who’s this young gentleman?”

      I was formally introduced, and shook the clammy corded hand of the old lady.

      “Tha’ looks delikit,” she observed, shaking her cap and its scarlet geraniums sadly: “Cum now, sit thee down, an’ dunna look so long o’ th’ leg.”

      I sat down on the sofa, on the cushions covered with blue and red checks. The room was very hot, and I stared about uncomfortably. The old lady sat peering at nothing, in reverie. She was a hard-visaged, bosomless dame, clad in thick black cloth-like armour, and wearing an immense twisted gold brooch in the lace at her neck.

      We heard heavy, quick footsteps above.

      “‘Er’s commin’,” remarked the old lady, rousing from her apathy. The footsteps came downstairs — quickly, then cautiously round the bend. Meg appeared in the doorway. She started with surprise, saying:

      “Well, I ‘eered sumbody, but I never thought it was you.” More colour still flamed into her glossy cheeks, and she smiled in her fresh, frank way. I think I have never seen a woman who had more physical charm; there was a voluptuous fascination in her every outline and movement; one never listened to the words that came from her lips, one watched the ripe motion of those red fruits.

      “Get ’em a drop o’ whisky, Meg — you’ll ‘a’e a drop?” I declined firmly, but did not escape.

      “Nay,” declared the old dame.. “I s’ll ha’e none o’ thy no’s. Should ter like it ‘ot? — Say th’ word, an’ tha’ ‘as it.”

      I did not say the word.

      “Then gi’e ’im claret,” pronounced my hostess, “though it’s thin-bellied stuff ter go ter bed on”— and claret it was.

      Meg went out again to see about closing. The grand-aunt sighed, and sighed again, for no perceptible reason but the whisky.

      “It’s well you’ve come ter see me now,” she moaned, “for you’ll none ‘a’e a chance next time you come’ n; — No — I’m all gone but my cap —”

      She shook that geraniumed erection, and I wondered what sardonic fate left it behind.

      “An’ I’m forced ter say it, I s’ll be thankful to be gone,” she added, after a few sighs.

      This weariness of the flesh was touching. The cruel truth is, however, that the old lady clung to life like a louse to a pig’s back. Dying, she faintly, but emphatically declared herself, “a bit better — a bit better. I s’ll be up tomorrow.”

      “I should a gone before now,” she continued, “but for that blessed wench — I canna abear to think o’ leavin’ ‘er — come drink up, my lad, drink up — nay, tha’ ‘rt nobbut young yet, tha’ ‘rt none topped up wi’ a thimbleful.”

      I took whisky in preference to the acrid stuff.

      “Ay,” resumed the grand-aunt. “I canna go in peace till ‘er’s settled — an’ ‘er’s that tickle o’ choosin’. Th’ right sort ‘asn’t th’ gumption ter

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