“But ye’ve gitten your notice,” Bob observed, staring at the floor, and Thomas had looked out of the window at the sky. Neither needed telling what was coming next, and each was getting ready to meet it in his way.... All those generations of Sills had kept Kit on the place long after a less tie-bound landlord would have turned him out, and they gave him a further chance of rescue now. The Squire was willing to let the farm to one of the lads, provided he could show a reasonable guarantee. “Then happen you’d let me bide wi’ ye till I was finished,” Kit said at the end. “I partly what think it wouldn’t be so long.” Even in the dusk, and doggedly turned away, they had been conscious of his eyes, moving enquiringly from face to face. Both of them, staring either at the sky or at the floor, saw equally the gleam of the white head turning and pausing and always turning again. In the house, in spite of its dumb ghosts, there was still the strange emptiness that stays so long after a death, as if out of a full cup some portion has been spilled. The silence enfolding the brothers seemed to beg to speak for itself, to deplore and refuse the harsh necessity of words. But still the old man’s eyes travelled and begged; and at last the slack-shouldered elder moved his head in a dreary shake. “I’m no use to you that way, Father, I doubt,” Bob said. “What this place wants is brass, and I’ve none o’ that at my back. It takes me all my time and more to shift along as it is, as folks in plenty’ll tell you if you ax. It’s no manner o’ use my thinking o’ the farm.” There was a second pause after that, and with it a sense in the air that the question had passed on, but nobody answered it except by that silence which resisted and refused. Then Bob spoke again, with a sort of half-shamed urging in his tone. “The lad here mun ha’ saved a bit by now. Happen Thomas could see to help you out.” Undoubtedly Thomas had seemed the one to help—the youngest, the strongest, and the man who had the brass. It was well enough known that he had saved, had been careful and patient, anxious to lay by. They knew, too, that he meant to take a farm, and here was Beautiful End for the lifting of a hand. What could he possibly want that would be more likely than that? Bob, who could as well have taken the Hall itself as the little farm, envied his younger brother with all his heart. It was on Thomas the old man had relied, never on Bob; that was perfectly clear to the one who had not made out. The asking of them together had been only a form, a polite concession to conservative family dues. Thomas was the right and proper person to respond; to put it plainly, he was the only one who could. But the claim on his help had come at the worst possible time, and his natural kindly instinct smothered in revolt.