f her hospitable duties. "Sit
ye down, sir, and sup a cup o' tea with us. Kettle's boilin', isn't
it, mother? You're not in a hurry, are you, mester?"

"I reckon I can stop a twothree minutes," said the man.

Mrs. Whiteside glanced at him sharply, and her mother clapped her
hands together.

"Ye're a Lancashire lad, for sure," cried she; "ye speak just same as
our own folks up on the moor yon."

He hesitated for a moment.

"Aye, I'll not deny the talk cooms natural to me," he said. "I thought
I'd forgot it, but my tongue seems to turn to it when I get agate o'
talkin' wi' Lancashire folks."

"I reckon you and our Will had many a crack together about the bonny
North," said Mrs. Rigby, as she spread the cloth, smoothing it
carefully with her wrinkled hands. "I'm fain to think my lad minds th'
owd place. Eh, I doubt he'd be nigh broken-hearted if he knowed we had
to leave it--I like as if I could be glad to think he knows nought
about it, poor lad. He didn't ever talk o' coomin' back, mester, did
he?"

"He met think on't," said the visitor slowly, "if he could be sure of
a welcome. But he run away, you see, again his father's will, an' he
wur allus reckoned a good-for-nothin' kind o' chap--so he seemed to
think."

"Who said that?" cried the old woman, pausing with the teapot poised
in mid-air, and reddening all over her withered face.

"Well, 'twas a kind o' notion he seemed to have, and o' course, though
it's ill blamin' the absent"--here he uttered a queer little
laugh--"when all's said and done he hasn't acted so very well. Any
chap wi' a heart in's breast 'ud ha' took thought for his own mother,
and 'ud ha' seen as she was kept comfortable an' happy in her owd age,
and not forced to shift to a strange place."

"I'm sure," put in Mrs. Whiteside indignantly, "I can't think what
you're droppin' hints o' that mak' for, sir. A woman has to follow her
husband, an' when his business takes him to London he takes her too.
Doin' very well, he is, i' th' coal business, an' I'm sure I make my
mother as comfortable an' as happy as I can. Turn London into the
moorside is what I cannot do, an' I'm not to be blamed for that. As
you said jest now if any one was to blame 'twas my brother."

"Well, I'll not have nobody blamin' my lad," cried the old woman.
"He's not to be faulted for what he knowed nought about. If he'd
knowed I doubt it 'ud ha' been different."

"That's true," interrupted the man; "if he'd knowed it 'ud h