After a week, or less, they made a bed for her in a room adjoining the kitchen, and once a day they put her in a great arm-chair and wheeled her into her place by the neuk window.

“It will be more heartsome for her,” said Rotha when she suggested the change; “she’ll like for us to talk to her all the same that she can’t answer us, poor soul.”

So it came about that every morning the invalid spent an hour or two in her familiar seat by the great ingle, the chair she had sat in day after day in the bygone times, before these terrible disasters had come like the breath of a plague-wind and bereft her of her powers.

“I wonder if she remembers what happened,” said Willy; “do you think she has missed them—­father and Ralph?”

“Why, surely,” said Rotha.  “But her ears are better than her eyes.  Don’t you mark how quick her breath comes sometimes when she has heard your voice outside, and how bright her eyes are, and how she tries to say, ‘God bless you!’ as you come up to her?”

“Yes, I think I’ve marked it,” said Willy, “and I’ve seen that light in her eyes die away into a blank stare or puzzled look, as if she wanted to ask some question while she lifted them to my face.”

“And Laddie there, when he barks down the lonnin—­haven’t you seen her then—­her breast heaving, the fingers of that hand of hers twitching, and the mumble of her poor lost voice, as though she’d say, ’Come, Rotha, my lass, be quick with the supper—­he’s here, my lass, he’s back?’”

“I think you must be right in that, Rotha—­that she misses Ralph,” said Willy.

“She’s nobbut a laal bit quieter, that’s all,” said Matthew Branthwaite one morning when he turned in at Shoulthwaite.  “The dame nivver were much of a talker—­not to say a talker, thoo knows; but mark me, she loves a crack all the same.”

Matthew acted pretty fully upon his own diagnosis of his old neighbor’s seizure.  He came to see her frequently, stayed long, rehearsed for her benefit all the gossip of the village, fired off his sapient proverbs, and generally conducted himself in his intercourse with the invalid precisely as he had done before.  In answer to any inquiries put to him at the Red Lion he invariably contented himself with his single explanation of Mrs. Ray’s condition, “She’s nobbut a laal bit quieter, and the dame nivver were much of a talker, thoo knows.”

Rotha Stagg remained at Shoulthwaite in accordance with her promise given to Ralph.  It was well for the household that she did so.  Young as the girl was, she alone seemed to possess either the self-command or the requisite energy and foresight to keep the affairs of the home and of the farm in motion.  It was not until many days after the disasters that had befallen the family that Willy Ray recovered enough self-possession to engage once more in his ordinary occupations.  He had spent the first few days in the room with his stricken mother, almost as unconscious as herself of what was going on about him; and indeed his nature had experienced a shock only less serious.