She could
never bear to go near them, or speak to them again, since they had sworn
against her father; and had not he been good to them when Stephen was
ill, often sparing her to watch with Martha, as well as helping to make
up his wages? If this was their religion, she did not care to have it;
for nobody else in Botfield would have done the same. And now she might
as well give up all thoughts of getting to heaven, where little Nan and
her baby sister were; for there would be nobody to care for her, and she
would be obliged to go back to all her old ways.
These were her bitter thoughts as she walked homewards alone, for
Stephen was gone up to the doctor's house to inquire after the master
and Miss Anne, and the others were waiting for him in Longville. She
heard their voices after a while coming along the turnpike road, and
walking quickly as if to overtake her; so she turned aside into a field,
and hid herself under a hedge that they might pass by. She crouched down
low upon the grass, and covered her red and smarting eyes from the
sunshine with her shawl, and then she listened for their footsteps to
die away in the distance.
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