Eliza turned baleful eyes upon the eager, inquisitive face. Her mind, concentrated in sullen fury upon the enemy recently departed with banners, found a difficulty in focussing itself upon this insignificant shape. When it succeeded, however, she ground him into dust. "Ay, well, next time you feel sure of anything, you can make certain you’re dead wrong!" she told him cruelly, surveying his bland countenance with cold contempt. "Jim’s my eldest, if you want to know, and as much the better o’ Geordie as Blindbeck’s the better o’ yon mudhole down on the marsh! He was always the smarter lad o’ the two,--’tisn’t likely he’d ha’ been left.... I’ll lay what you like it’s Jim as is really coming, after all!" "But in that case you would surely have heard from him yourself?" Elliman was still disporting himself with the brazen folly of innocence upon the forbidden ground. "He’d have written to tell his mother, surely,--not his aunt?" A distinct thrill of apprehension ran through the company at this tactful speech. Mary Phyllis’s nudge on this occasion was one of sharp reproof. The clouds thickened on Eliza’s brow. "Nay, then, he just wouldn’t, Mr. Clever-Lad-Know-All, so that’s that! I’m his mother right enough, as nobody but a fool would ha’ needed telling, but he wouldn’t ha’ written me, all the same. Me and Jim got across a while back, and he’s taken sulks with me ever since. He’d be like enough to write to Sarah, by way of giving me back a bit o’ my own. She always cockered him fearful, did Sarah, and set him agen me whenever she could. And if there’s brass about, as she says, she’ll keep it warm for him, never fear! She’ll take right good care it never gets past her to Blindbeck or any of his own!" "Jim would ha’ been right enough but for Geordie all along." Mrs. Addison shook a loose and agile bonnet with an impressive air. "He was a right-down nuisance, was Geordie Thornthet,--a bad lad as well as a reg’lar limb! Such tricks as he was up to, I’m sure,--turmut-lanterns and the like, booin’ at folks’ winders after dark, and hiding behind hedges when folk was courtin’ about t’lanes! Stephen and me wasn’t wed then, you’ll think on, and I mind a terble fright as Geordie give us one summer night. Stephen was terble sweet on me, as you’ll likely know, though he’d choke himself black in the face afore he’d own to it now. Well, yon night as I’m speaking of he had hold o’ my hand, and was looking as near like a dying duck in a thunderstorm as ever I see. ’Jenny Sophia,’ he was saying, as sweet as a field of clover, ’I’m that set on you, Jenny Sophia’--when up pops Geordie on t’far side o’ the hedge, girning and making a hullaballoo like a donkey afore rain!"