Page:That Lass o' Lowrie's.djvu/218

194 She did not kiss the child again, but held it in her listless way even after it fell asleep. She rested an elbow on her knee and her chin upon her hand while her tearful eyes searched the fire, and thus Joan found her when she came in at dusk.

"Tha'rt late again, Joan," she said.

"Ay," Joan answered, "I'm late."

She laid her things aside and came to the fire-light. The little one always won her first attention when she came from her day's labor.

"Has she been frettin'?" she asked.

"Ay," said Liz, "she's done nowt else but fret lately. I dunnot know what ails her."

She was in Joan's arms by this time and Joan stood looking at the puny face.

"She is na well," she said in a low voice. "She has pain as we know nowt on, poor little lass. We conna help her, or bear it fur her. We would if we could, little un,"—as if she forgot Liz's presence.

"Joan," Liz faltered, "what if yo were to lose her?"

"I hope I shanna. I hope I shanna."

"Yo' could na bear it?"

"Theer is na mich as we conna bear."

"That's true enow," said Liz. "I wish foak could dee o' trouble."

"Theer's more nor yo' has wished th' same," Joan answered.

She thought afterward of the girl's words and remembered how she looked when she uttered them,—her piteous eyes resting on the embers, her weak little mouth quivering, her small hands at work,—but when she heard them, she only recognized in them a new touch of the old petulance to which she had become used.