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The walls of this interesting apartment are possibly decked with a few tradesmen's almanacs, whereon Grace Darling is depicted with magnificent bluish hair, pink cheeks, and fashionable dress; or his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales assumes a heroic attitude, and poses as a field-marshal of the most stern and lofty description. Thus are 'Tilda's æsthetic tastes developed.
Tilda's eyes never left the tug; but the boy kept intermittent watch only, being busy writing with the stump of a pencil on a scrap of paper he had spread on the gritty concrete. Somewhere in the distance a hooter sounded, proclaiming the hour. Still but the thinnest thread of smoke issued from the tug's funnel. "It's not like Bill," Tilda muttered.
On their way back to dinner signalled by the blowing of a horn in the farm-place he ranged up beside Tilda and said gently, "I'm sorry," upon which, to her astonishment, Tilda's eyes filled with tears. She herself could not have said it; but somehow it was just by differing from her and from other folks that this boy endeared himself.
"They told me you was keepin' them here for debt; but that's nonsense, becos they can't never pay it back till you let 'em make money." "A fat lot I shall ever get from Mortimer if I let him out o' my sight. You don't know Mr. Mortimer." "Don't I?" was Tilda's answer. "What d'yer take me for? Why everybody knows what Mr. Mortimer's like everybody in Maggs's, anyway.
Gashwiler had thought it best to speak her mind? What importance could he attach to the disclosure of Metta Judson, the Gashwiler hired girl, who chatted freely during her appearances with food, that Doc Cummins had said old Grandma Foutz couldn't last out another day; that the Peter Swansons were sending clear to Chicago for Tilda's trousseau; and that Jeff Murdock had arrested one of the Giddings boys, but she couldn't learn if it was Ferd or Gus, for being drunk as a fool and busting up a bazaar out at the Oak Grove schoolhouse, and the fighting was something terrible.
''Tilda's friends are low people, and if she don't know any better, it's their fault, and not hers. 'Well, but you know, miss, said Phoebe, for which name 'Phib' was used as a patronising abbreviation, 'if she was only to take copy by a friend oh! if she only knew how wrong she was, and would but set herself right by you, what a nice young woman she might be in time!
It had no tune in it, no intelligible words; it was just a chant rising and falling, as the surf might rise and fall around the base of that Island for which his eyes sought the green vale right away to the horizon. Mr. Jessup looked up from his work. His eyes encountered Tilda's, and Tilda's were smiling. But at the same time they enjoined silence. The boy sang on.
They had met no one on their way, and it crossed Tilda's mind but the thought was incredible that Sarah Huggins served this vast barracks single-handed. A flight of stone steps led up from this area to the railed coping twenty feet aloft, where the sky shone pure and fresh. "Up there, an' you 're in the garden."
Tilda's face is grave, however, as she stands there in the morning sunshine. She is looking back upon the enclosure where the white stones overtop the bluebells. They are headstones, and mark the cemetery where Miss Sally, not ordinarily given to sentiment, has a fancy for interring her favourite dogs.
But to-day he was busy with the sheep, and the children had a long morning and afternoon to fill up as best they might. Arthur Miles did not share Tilda's rapture over the ruined cottage, and for a very good reason. He was battling with a cruel disappointment.
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