When she reached the cottage the old woman came forward and seized her by both hands. “Bless your bonnie face,” she said, “I am glad to see you.”
“How is John getting on?” said Aline.
“Oh, he’s quite a new creature, thanks to all you have done for us, my dear. When I see him swinging along with great strides I say to myself,—now if it had not been for our little St. Aline where would my boy have been?”
“Oh, you must not thank me, Janet, and I really do not like you to call me that, you must thank Elspeth and Master Mowbray.”
“Ay, true, hinnie, the Master has been very good and has always said that we were welcome to a few things, but, there now, when I asked Mistress Mowbray, she said that she had something else to think of than attend to any gaberlunzie body that came round the doors. And where should I have been with my laddie105 if it had not been for you with your sweet face and your kind heart?”
Even Janet Arnside realised that Aline’s was no ordinary beauty as she watched the lightfooted graceful child moving round her room and setting things straight, or helping her to cook for her sick boy, or sitting, as she was then, with the sunshine coming through the open door and throwing up the outline of her beautiful form against the dark shadows within the cottage.
“Ah, but Mistress Mowbray is very busy, Janet, she has a great deal to manage in that huge place. It is Elspeth, dear old Elspeth, who looks after all the sick folk and you should try and go up and thank her, now that your son is better and you are able to leave him.”
“Ay, Mistress Aline, that should she,” said a voice from the door as John entered, “but it is our little mistress here that should be getting most of the thanks, I trow.” The boy pushed back the little window shutter as he spoke that he might the better see the child. She was for him his conception of the heavenly angels and during his long illness he used in his delirium to confuse her with the messengers from above who were to take him to the other land. He had been ill for a weary while and had had more than one relapse but she had been a constant visitor when opportunity allowed, and had often soothed him to sleep when even his mother could do nothing. He worshipped Aline in a curious half-fatherly way, although he was only some four years her senior, and the dream of his life at that time was to be of assistance to her some day.
Aline was just on the point of going when they heard rough angry voices passing along the road, so she shrank106 back into the shadowy recesses of the cottage;—“I tell you what it is,” one of the voices was saying, “if you do not help me I’ll see that you never forget it.”
“Now, there you are again,” the other voice replied, “you never can keep a civil tongue in your head.”
“Why that is Andrew Woolridge and Thomas Carluke,” Aline exclaimed. “What are they doing down here?”
Andrew and Thomas were two of the men from the Hall and Aline knew that at this time of day they ought to be at work.
“They are up to no good I’ll be bound,” said Janet.
“Andrew Woolridge seems to be doing a good thing for himself somehow, mother,” said John. “I wonder where he got all that meal he has been bringing home from the mill lately; I saw him with a boll early this morn and he brought two bolls yesterday and two the day before.”
“Ay, John, and I saw him the day before that with a boll.”
“He must have enough for the winter and some to sell too, if he has been going on at that rate, mother.”
“Ay, that must be, but I should not like to be the one to ask him where he got the oats he has been so busy carrying to the mill.”
“It is time I was going,” said Aline, and bidding them good-bye, she turned homeward, pondering on her way what she had heard.
“I fancy that the oats will come from Holwick,” she thought to herself. “I wonder if he is still taking them,” and she resolved that she would herself keep an eye on Andrew and Thomas.
107
She had not long to wait. That very evening she managed to slip out near the granary at dusk when the outside servants went home. Thomas slept in the hall, but she saw him going to the gate and talking to Andrew very quietly.
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