"I can't help it, miss," she said, "you'll not take offence, I'm sure. But I can't do anything but love you for what you've done for me an' Jane. You've brought more comfort to this house than I ever thought the Lord 'ud send us, an' I hope He'll pay you back a hundredfold, for I cannot."
I wonder why one should feel so warm and virtuous for having done one's duty. I had put my heart into the work, as I always do--for who would be a mere mechanic whom God meant for a craftsman?--but the farmer had paid me the price I asked, and the whole transaction had been conducted on strict business lines. What right had I to be pleased with the super-payment of love? But I was.
Over the teacups Mrs. Brown opened her heart to me. Jane had gone away to the dairy, and I think her mother spoke more freely in her absence, or perhaps the feeling of strangeness had by that time been dispelled. I saw it did her good to talk and I rarely interrupted her. She sat with her cup on her knee, and her eyes fixed, for the most part, upon the hearth.
"He seemed to suffer terrible towards the end," she said, "but he allus put a good face on it an' tried to keep it from us. But choose how he suffered you never 'eard one word of complaint, an' he wouldn't let us say ought hard against Him above. And yet, you know, he was never what you might call a church member, an' he wasn't one 'at went regular to either church or chapel. You see, it's a matter o' two mile to t' chapel at Windyridge, an' t' nearest church 'll be gettin' on for four mile away.
"An' he wasn't one 'at spoke a deal about religion, neither, nobbut he wouldn't hear anybody speak a word agen it. There isn't a labourer or a farmer or t' doctor himself 'at 'ud use a bad word i' front o' Greenwood, an' he never did himself. He used to sit i' that high-backed chair where you're sittin' now, every night of his life, wi' that big Bible on his knee, an' read in it, but he never read it out loud, an' what Scripture we got we'd to read for ourselves. Nobbut he'd quote it now an' then, like, when there were any 'casion.
"I've thought often sin' he came home that day an' told us what were goin' to happen, an' especially sin' he were laid up, 'at it 'ud maybe have been better if he'd read it up for us all to hear, an' talked about it a bit, but it wasn't his way, wasn't that. He was same as he couldn't, but I wonder sometimes if it 'ud have saved us this trouble."