"You can’t rightly know what you’re saying, Sarah," she said coldly, "you can’t, indeed! Geordie coming after all these years,--nay, now, yon isn’t true!" "Ay, but it is, I tell ye,--true enough! True as yon Sunday fringe o’ yourn as you bought in Witham!" "And wi’ brass, you said?" Eliza let the flippant remark pass without notice, and Sarah nodded. "A deal o’ brass?" "Yon’s what he says." "Eh, well, I never did!" The angry wind of her sigh passed over Sarah’s head and rustled the honesty in a vase behind. She repeated "I never did!" and creaked away from the enemy towards the window. Behind her, Geordie’s mother allowed the ghost of a smile to find a fleeting resting-place on her lips. "And so he’s on his road home, is he,--coming right back?" Mrs. Will kept her back turned, thinking hard as she spoke. There was no section of Sarah’s statement but she intended to prove by the inch. "Ay, well, it’s what they mostly do when they’ve made their brass." "He’ll be over here, I reckon, afore you can say knife! Taking first boat, he says he is, or the fastest he can find." She turned her head towards the door through which his voice had come in the dream. "What, I shouldn’t be that surprised if he was to open yon door now!" There was such conviction in her tone that Eliza, too, was startled into turning her head. There was nothing to see, of course, and she turned back, but her ears still thrilled with the thrill in Sarah’s voice. The cowman, passing, saw her face behind the glass, and said to himself that the missis was out for trouble once again. She was silent for a while, trying vainly to grapple the situation in the pause. She saw well enough that there was nothing to be gained by dispute if the story were true. She still looked to be top-dog in that or any other case, because Blindbeck pride was founded on solid Blindbeck gold; but there was no denying that the enemy would lie in a totally different position, and would have to be met on totally different ground. If, on the other hand, the great statement was a lie, there would be plenty of time for vengeance when the facts were known. Her malicious soul argued that the real game was to give Sarah plenty of rope, but her evil temper stood in the way of the more subtle method. It got the upper hand of her at last, and she flung round with an angry swing. "Nay, then, I can’t believe it!" she exclaimed passionately,--"I just can’t! It’s a pack o’ lies, that’s what it is, Sarah,--a gert string o’ senseless lies!" This coarse description of her effort hurt Sarah in her artistic pride. She stiffened still further. "I reckoned you’d take it like that," she replied in a dignified tone. "’Tisn’t decent nor Christian, but it’s terble nat’ral."