“Do you hear any one crying?” she said.
Martha suddenly looked confused.
“No,” she answered. “It’s
th’ wind. Sometimes it sounds like as if
some one was lost on th’ moor an’ wailin’.
It’s got all sorts o’ sounds.”
“But listen,” said Mary. “It’s
in the house—down one of those long corridors.”
And at that very moment a door must have been opened
somewhere down-stairs; for a great rushing draft blew
along the passage and the door of the room they sat
in was blown open with a crash, and as they both jumped
to their feet the light was blown out and the crying
sound was swept down the far corridor so that it was
to be heard more plainly than ever.
“There!” said Mary. “I told
you so! It is some one crying—and it
isn’t a grown-up person.”
Martha ran and shut the door and turned the key, but
before she did it they both heard the sound of a door
in some far passage shutting with a bang, and then
everything was quiet, for even the wind ceased “wutherin’”
for a few moments.
“It was th’ wind,” said Martha stubbornly.
“An’ if it wasn’t, it was little
Betty Butterworth, th’ scullery-maid. She’s
had th’ toothache all day.”
But something troubled and awkward in her manner made
Mistress Mary stare very hard at her. She did
not believe she was speaking the truth.
“THERE WAS SOME ONE CRYING—THERE
WAS!”
The next day the rain poured down in torrents again,
and when Mary looked out of her window the moor was
almost hidden by gray mist and cloud. There could
be no going out to-day.
“What do you do in your cottage when it rains
like this?” she asked Martha.
“Try to keep from under each other’s feet
mostly,” Martha answered. “Eh! there
does seem a lot of us then. Mother’s a good-tempered
woman but she gets fair moithered. The biggest
ones goes out in th’ cow-shed and plays there.
Dickon he doesn’t mind th’ wet. He
goes out just th’ same as if th’ sun was
shinin’. He says he sees things on rainy
days as doesn’t show when it’s fair weather.
He once found a little fox cub half drowned in its
hole and he brought it home in th’ bosom of his
shirt to keep it warm. Its mother had been killed
nearby an’ th’ hole was swum out an’
th’ rest o’ th’ litter was dead.
He’s got it at home now. He found a half-drowned
young crow another time an’ he brought it home,
too, an’ tamed it. It’s named Soot
because it’s so black, an’ it hops an’
flies about with him everywhere.”
The time had come when Mary had forgotten to resent
Martha’s familiar talk. She had even begun
to find it interesting and to be sorry when she stopped
or went away. The stories she had been told by
her Ayah when she lived in India had been quite unlike
those Martha had to tell about the moorland cottage
which held fourteen people who lived in four little
rooms and never had quite enough to eat. The children
seemed to tumble about and amuse themselves like a
litter of rough, good-natured collie puppies.
Mary was most attracted by the mother and Dickon.
When Martha told stories of what “mother”
said or did they always sounded comfortable.
