‘Why, to tell the trewth, I could n’t a-bear to go nigh the place,’ blurted out the farmer. ‘Nay, nay—I’ve been a-goin’ to Littlecomb Farm Sunday after Sunday for nigh upon five and twenty year. I don’t know how you could expect me, Mrs. Fiander, to go there now as he be gone.’ He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his smock-frock, and at this tribute to Elias’s memory his widow forgave the gruffness of Isaac’s tone, and almost, but not quite, the slight to herself. She gazed at him for a moment in silence with a quivering lip, and he wiped his eyes again and heaved a sigh. ‘You do not think of me at all,’ said Rosalie, at last. ‘You don’t consider my loneliness, or what I feel when I sit there, looking at the two empty chairs, and thinking of how I used to sit between you, and how happy we used to be. Is n’t it worse for me to see his empty place than you? You might have come—even if it did hurt you—you might have come to bring me a word of comfort. I think you were very unkind, Mr. Sharpe!’ ‘Don’t ’ee now, my dear,’ stammered Isaac, almost purple in the face, and with his usually keen eyes suffused with tears. ‘I do really feel touched to the ’eart when you look at me so pitiful and say such things. God knows I’d be main glad to comfort you, but what can the likes of I do?’ ‘You could let me feel that I had still a friend,’ sobbed Rosalie. ‘You might come and sit in your old chair, and we could—we could talk about Elias.’ ‘That’s trew, so we could,’ agreed Isaac in a choked voice. ‘Well, next Sunday—if I live so long—I’ll not let nothing hinder me. I’ll come, my dear. I d’ ’low I should ha’ thought of you yesterday, but I could n’t seem to think o’ nothing but how ’Lias war n’t there.’ ‘Well, I shall be very glad to see you,’ said Rosalie, rising, and tremulously beginning to pull down her veil. ‘And I am very grateful for your kindness. Perhaps,’ she added hesitatingly, ‘you might be able to look in one day during the week?’ ‘Nay,’ returned the farmer, ‘nay, Mrs. Fiander, not before Sunday. I be very busy to-week—we be shearin’, d’ ye see, and there’s the big mead to be cut. Nay—not before Sunday.’ ‘Oh, very well,’ she responded a little stiffly; and she went out of the house and across the yard without speaking again except to say Good-bye at the gate. The downs were now all bathed with the light of the sinking sun, and the topmost branches of the hedges which bordered the cornfields seemed turned to gold; while the banks beneath had begun already to assume the deeper tint that spoke of gathering dew—dew that the morning light would turn to a very sheet of silver; but Rosalie could only see the beauties of the world without through a mist of crape and tears.