“I’ll swear I am,” asserted Luke, and, picking his way through the fragments of crockery, he put his arm round Maimie’s waist. “Well, maybe you are,” she said, relenting a little, but still weeping piteously. “’Tis a judgment on me I’m sure; I didn’t ought to ha’ spoke that way about your mother to your face.” “Nay, if it comes to that,” groaned Luke, penitently, “I didn’t ought to ha’ cast up about the brass to ye.” By this time he was mopping delicately at Maimie’s eyes with a beautiful silk handkerchief, duly perfumed with a bottle of sixpenny scent; and Maimie was so touched by this attention that she presently smiled wanly through her tears, and the two concluded a compact of friendship as they cleared away the broken china. Meanwhile Jim Barnes and Mrs Wharton sat face to face on either side of the parlour fire, gazing at each other for some time in unbroken silence. Presently the farmer spoke, pointing at the widow with his thumb, and inaugurating proceedings by heaving a deep sigh. “I reckon ye miss the gaffer, Mrs Wharton?” “I do indeed, Mr Barnes,” returned the widow, with an answering sigh, which made her stiff black silk creak alarmingly. “Ah—ye can’t miss him more nor what I do my poor missus. She was a wonderful woman, Mrs Wharton.” “She was—ah, she was. Providence seems to ha’ dealt a bit ’ard wi’ the two of us, Mr Barnes, but we munnot _re_-pine.” After this there came a pause, during which the farmer scratched his head and rubbed his knees. “My lass, Maimie, d’ye see—she’s a very good lass, but a bit giddy—she dunnot seem never to remember naught.” “She’s but young,” said the widow tolerantly. “Our Luke—the eldest lad, he do seem to gi’ me a lot o’ trouble. Wants to know better nor me, and is ever and always trying to be gaffer. ‘Women don’t know naught about farmin’,’ says he to me as bold as ye please.” “Did he?” ejaculated Jim, with a deeply scandalised air. “Not but what,” continued the widow, half-laughingly, after a moment’s reflection; “not but what the lad have got a wonderful notion o’ farm work himself. Wonderful, he have—eh, he shapes wonderful well for a lad of his years. Mr Gradwell, now, o’ Little Upton, he was passin’ the remark to me only t’other day. Says he, ‘I never did see sech a long head as your Luke have got for sech a young chap,’ he says.” “Ah,” exclaimed Farmer Barnes appreciatively, “he’s a fine lad, I’ll say that for him. He used to follow your poor master same as his shadow. I reckon ’twas your Joe what put him in the way of things so well. I reckon,” he continued sympathetically, “he’d ha’ been proud on him if he’d ha’ lived, poor owd lad.” “I reckon he would,” agreed Mrs Wharton, puckering up her face and producing her handkerchief; from the turn the conversation was now taking she would have soon to cry again. “Ah,” said Barnes, “your lad, I reckon he’s a comfort to you, Mrs Wharton.”