Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/205

Rh what she saw there to hold her thoughts—what memories, what faces, what ghosts of old events.

"Had you any children?"

"Children? Yes, miss." She folded her hands on her checked apron. "Children are the great thing while they last, but they go off an' leave you, an' 'ave children o' their own."

"They don't come to see you here?"

"No, miss." The tone in which she answered was not merely indifferent; it was absent-minded. She nodded at the view before her. "That 's like the bit o' cropped paddock we 'ad between th' 'ouse an' the beck."

The nurse looked at it. It was nothing but trees and grass. She asked: "What 's a beck?"

"A stream, miss—with big stones in it. The one we 'ad, in the floodtime, it made such a noise as you never 'eard, all night long, when you would be sleepin'."

"Was that in England?"

"Yes, miss. I 'ad a room, up-stairs, that looked out a window over the kitchen garden—an' the bit o' paddock—an' the beck."

"You must miss it here," the nurse said—for something to say.

"The beck? Ah, miss, when we left Liverpool, aboard ship, the sound o' the water made me cry for it. An' in my sleep, at night, with the ship tossin' about, I dreamt of it. An' all day long the clouds went by, 'igh over 'ead, back to Ol' Cuniston—an' the meadows—an' the beck—while I sat on the deck