“Ay, she never could abear to see anything tret rough-like or unkind. It was that made her look at him first thing. She’d a deal of offers, had Tibbie, as you’ll likely know, but she never would hear tell of anybody but Stephen. Once she’d started in feeling sorry for him, the rest was like to follow. He worshipped her an’ all, did the poor lad, but I reckon it was Tibbie had to do the asking! She’d to begin all over again from the beginning, so to speak, and make a man of him from the start.” “And a right fine man she made of him, while she was about it!” Mrs. Tanner crowed. “_Germans’ll_ say so, any way up!... Them children of his are ter’ble like him an’ all,” she went on presently, but more as if she were now offering the cue instead of accepting it. “Ay.” Mrs. Clapham’s hands returned to their slow travel up and down her knees. “Ay, they’re ter’ble like....” She turned her head and stared thoughtfully at the photographs on the shelf. “It’s because they’re that like I couldn’t get Tibbie to bring ’em here to live. ‘It’s over near yon woman,’ she used to say, whenever I axed. They come once, though, you’ll likely think on, and a fair old time we had of it, to be sure! I went to the lass, of course, after Stephen was killed, but I couldn’t frame to stop; so, after a deal o’ pushing and pulling, her and the children come for a short visit. But it wasn’t very long before she found that _she_ couldn’t stop, neither! Emma Catterall was always after them children, standing on t’ doorstep or hanging about in t’ street. She couldn’t keep away from them, whatever she did; what, it was almost as if she watched ’em in their beds!” Mrs. Tanner had turned her head, too, and was staring out through the slightly open door, through which the sun was pushing its way as if laying a carpet for coming feet. But neither of the women who were sitting there waiting for good news had a thought to spare for that news just now. “They say Emma makes no end of a stir about Stephen now—showing his likenesses and that. Happen she’s proud of him now, and happen sorry; leastways, that’s what you’d say if it wasn’t Emma.” But again the charwoman shook her head. “It’d be right enough for most folk—I’ll give you that; but it don’t seem to fit somehow with Emma. She went on that strange, too, she made you creep. She just hung about waiting all the time—never come in once and sat herself down for a bit of a chat. Of course, we were none of us over-friendly-like, she was bound to feel that; but neither Tibbie nor me is the sort to fly out at folk unless we was pressed.” “She’s not one for ever going into other folks’ spots,” observed Mrs. Tanner. “And I don’t know as I ever see her set down in the whole of my life!”