A few minutes after, Briarley came in. Janey piloted him and he entered with a smile at once apologetic and encouraging.
"He wur theer," said Janey. "But he had na had nowt."
Briarley sidled forward and seated himself upon the edge of a chair; his smile broadened steadily, but he was in a tremendous minority. Granny Dixon transfixed him with her baleful eye, and under its influence the smile was graduated from exhilarated friendliness to gravity, from gravity to gentle melancholy, from melancholy to deepest gloom. But at this stage a happy thought struck him and he beamed again.
"How—how art tha doin', Misses?" he quavered. "I hope tha'rt makin' thysen comfortable."
The reception this polite anxiety met with was not encouraging. Granny Dixon's eye assumed an expression still more baleful.
"Tha'st been at it again," she shouted. "Tha'st been at it again. Tha'll neer git none o' my brass to spend at th' ale-house. Mak' sure o' that."
Mr. Briarley turned his attention to the fire again. Melancholy was upon the point of marking him for her own, when the most delicate of tact came to his rescue.
"It is na thy brass we want, Misses," he proclaimed. "It's—it's thy comp'ny." And then clenched the matter by adding still more feebly, "Ay, to be sure it's thy comp'ny, is na it, Sararann?"
"Ay," faltered Mrs. Briarley, "to be sure."
"It's nowt o' th' soart," answered Granny Dixon, in the tone of the last trump. "An' dunnot yo' threep me down as it is."
