A knock at the door. It was Peggy.
"He wants for to see you, to wish you good-bye."
"I cannot come. Oh, Peggy, send them away."
It was her only cry for sympathy; and the old servant understood it.
She sent them away, somehow; not politely, as I have been given to
understand.
"Good go with them," said Peggy, as she grimly watched their
retreating figures. "We're rid of bad rubbish, anyhow." And she
turned into the house, with the intention of making ready some
refreshment for Susan, after her hard day at the market, and her
harder evening. But in the kitchen, to which she passed through the
empty house-place, making a face of contemptuous dislike at the used
tea-cups and fragments of a meal yet standing there, she found Susan,
with her sleeves tucked up and her working apron on, busied in
preparing to make clap-bread, one of the hardest and hottest domestic
tasks of a Daleswoman. She looked up, and first met, and then
avoided Peggy's eye; it was too full of sympathy. Her own cheeks
were flushed, and her own eyes were dry and burning.
"Where's the board, Peggy? We need clap-bread; and, I reckon, I've
time to get through with it to-night." Her voice had a sharp, dry
tone in it, and her motions a jerking angularity about them.
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