“Three months since: but sit down, and let me take your hat, and I’ll tell you all about it. Stop, you have had nothing to eat, have you?”

“I want nothing: I have ordered supper at home. You sit down too. I never dreamt of his dying! Let me hear how it came to pass. You say you don’t expect them back for some time⁠—the young people?”

“No⁠—I have to scold them every evening for their late rambles: but they don’t care for me. At least, have a drink of our old ale; it will do you good: you seem weary.”

She hastened to fetch it before I could refuse, and I heard Joseph asking whether “it warn’t a crying scandal that she should have followers at her time of life? And then, to get them jocks out o’ t’ maister’s cellar! He fair shaamed to ’bide still and see it.”