From time to
time, as his mood took him, he turned and laid his hand on her in a
poignant caress. As if she had been his first-born, or his bride, he
spoke to her in the thick, soft voice of passion, with pitiful, broken
words and mutterings.
"What is it, Daasy----what is it? There, did they, then, did they? My
beauty--my lil laass. I--I wuss a domned brute to forget tha, a domned
brute."
All that night and the next night he lay beside her. The funeral
passed like a fantastic interlude between the long acts of his
passion. His great sorrow made him humble to Mrs. Gale so that he
allowed her to sustain him with food and drink. And on the third day
it was known throughout Garthdale that young Greatorex, who had lost
his father, had saved his mare.
Only Steven Rowcliffe knew that the mare had saved young Greatorex.
* * * * *
And the little phial of chlorodyne was put back among the cobwebs and
forgotten.
XIV
Down at the Vicarage the Vicar was wrangling with his youngest
daughter. For the third time Alice declared that she was not well and
that she didn't want her milk.
"Whether you want it or not you've got to drink it," said the Vicar.
Alice took the glass in her lap and looked at it.
"Am I to stand over you till you drink it?"
Alice put the rim of the glass to her mouth and shuddered.
"I can't," she said. "It'll make me sick."
"Leave the poor child alone, Papa," said Gwenda.
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