Page:That Lass o' Lowrie's.djvu/234

210 had gone wrong at home or abroad, and his grievance had rankled and rendered him unusually contumacious.

Nearing the group, Grace looked up with a faint but kindly smile.

"Good-morning!" he said; "a pleasant day, friends!"

"Owd Sammy" glanced down at him with condescending tolerance. He had been talking himself, and the greeting had broken in upon his eloquence.

"Which on us," he asked dryly; "which on us said it wur na?"

A few paces from the group of idlers Joan Lowrie stood at work. Some of the men had noted her presence when they lounged by, but in the enjoyment of their gossip, they had forgotten her again. She had seen Grace too; she had heard his greeting and the almost brutal laugh that followed it; and, added to this, she had caught a passing glimpse of the curate's face. She dropped her work, and, before the laugh had died out, stood up confronting the loungers.

"If theer is a mon among yo' as he has harmed," she said; "if theer's one among yo' as he's ivver done a wrong to, let that mon speak up."

It was "Owd Sammy" who was the first to recover himself. Probably he remembered the power he prided himself upon wielding over the weaker sex. He laid aside his pipe for a moment and tried sarcasm,—an adaptation of the same sarcasm he had tried upon the curate.

"Which on us said theer wur?" he asked.

Joan turned her face, pale with repressed emotion, toward him.

"There be men here as I would scarce ha' believed could ha' had much agen him. I see one mon here as has a wife as lay nigh death a month or so ago, an' it were the parson as went to see her day after day, an' tuk her help and