through the long evenings, noticed his increasing languor, his restless irritability, with perplexed anxiety, and at last resolved to call his mother’s attention to his brother’s haggard, careworn looks.  She listened with a startled recollection of Will’s claims upon her love.  She noticed his decreasing appetite and half-checked sighs.

“Will, lad! what’s come o’er thee?” said she to him, as he sat listlessly gazing into the fire.

“There’s nought the matter with me,” said he, as if annoyed at her remark.

“Nay, lad, but there is.”  He did not speak again to contradict her; indeed, she did not know if he had heard her, so unmoved did he look.

“Wouldst like to go to Upclose Farm?” asked she, sorrowfully.

“It’s just blackberrying time,” said Tom.

Will shook his head.  She looked at him awhile, as if trying to read that expression of despondency, and trace it back to its source.

“Will and Tom could go,” said she; “I must stay here till I’ve found her, thou knowest,” continued she, dropping her voice.

He turned quickly round, and with the authority he at all times exercised over Tom, bade him begone to bed.

When Tom had left the room, he prepared to speak.

CHAPTER II.

“Mother,” then said Will, “why will you keep on thinking she’s alive?  If she were but dead, we need never name her name again.  We’ve never heard nought on her since father wrote her that letter; we never knew whether she got it or not.  She’d left her place before then.  Many a one dies in—”

“Oh, my lad! dunnot speak so to me, or my heart will break outright,” said his mother, with a sort of cry.  Then she calmed herself, for she yearned to persuade him to her own belief.  “Thou never asked, and thou’rt too like thy father for me to tell without asking—but it were all to be near Lizzie’s old place that I settled down on this side o’ Manchester; and the very day at after we came, I went to her old missus, and asked to speak a word wi’ her.  I had a strong mind to cast it up to her, that she should ha’ sent my poor lass away, without telling on it to us first; but she were in black, and looked so sad I could na’ find in my heart to threep it up.  But I did ask her a bit about our Lizzie.  The master would have turned her away at a day’s warning (he’s gone to t’other place; I hope he’ll meet wi’ more mercy there than he showed our Lizzie—I do), and when the missus asked her should she write to us, she says Lizzie shook her head; and when she speered at her again, the poor lass went down on her knees, and begged her not, for she said it would break my heart (as it has done, Will—God knows it has),” said the poor mother, choking with her struggle to keep down her hard overmastering grief, “and her father would curse her—Oh, God, teach me to be patient.”  She could not speak for a few minutes—“and the lass threatened, and said she’d go drown herself in the canal, if the missus wrote home—and so—

“Well!  I’d got a trace of my child—the missus thought she’d gone to th’ workhouse to be nursed; and there I went—and there, sure enough, she had been—and they’d turned her out as she were strong, and told her she were young enough to work—but whatten kind o’ work would be open to her, lad, and her baby to keep?”

Will listened to his mother’s tale with deep sympathy, not unmixed with the old bitter shame.  But the opening of her heart had unlocked his, and after awhile he spoke—

“Mother!  I think I’d e’en better go home.  Tom can stay wi’ thee.  I know I should stay too, but I cannot stay in peace so near—her—without craving to see her—Susan Palmer, I mean.”

“Has the old Mr. Palmer thou telled me on a daughter?” asked Mrs. Leigh.

“Ay, he has.  And I love her above a bit.  And it’s because I love her I want to leave Manchester.  That’s all.”

Mrs. Leigh tried to understand this speech for some time, but found it difficult of interpretation.

“Why shouldst thou not tell her thou lov’st her?  Thou’rt a likely lad, and sure o’ work.  Thou’lt have Upclose at my death; and as for that, I could let thee have it now, and keep mysel’ by doing a bit of charring.  It seems to me a very backwards sort o’ way of winning her to think of leaving Manchester.”

“Oh, mother, she’s so gentle and so good—she’s downright holy.  She’s never known a touch of sin; and can I ask her to marry me, knowing what we do about Lizzie, and fearing worse?  I doubt if one like her could ever care for me; but if she knew about my sister, it would put a gulf between us, and she’d shudder up at the thought of crossing it.  You don’t know how good she is, mother!”

“Will, Will! if she’s so good as thou say’st, she’ll have pity on such as my Lizzie.  If she has no pity for such, she’s a cruel Pharisee, and thou’rt best without her.”

But he only shook his head, and sighed; and for the time the conversation dropped.

But a new idea sprang up in Mrs. Leigh’s head.  She thought that she would go and see Susan Palmer, and speak up for Will, and tell her the truth about Lizzie; and according to her pity for the poor sinner, would she be worthy or unworthy of him.  She resolved to go the very next afternoon, but without telling any one of her plan.  Accordingly she looked out the Sunday clothes she had never before had the heart to unpack since she came to Manchester, but which she now desired to appear in, in order to do credit to Will.  She put on her old-fashioned black mode bonnet, trimmed with real lace; her scarlet cloth cloak, which she had had ever since she was married; and, always spotlessly clean, she set forth on her unauthorised embassy.  She knew the Palmers lived in Crown Street, though where she had heard it she could not tell; and modestly asking her way, she arrived in the street about a quarter to four o’clock.  She stopped to enquire the exact number, and the woman whom she addressed told her that Susan Palmer’s school would not be loosed till four, and asked her to step in and wait until then at her house.

“For,” said she, smiling, “them that wants Susan Palmer wants a kind friend of ours; so we, in a manner, call cousins.  Sit down, missus, sit down.  I’ll wipe the chair, so that it shanna dirty your cloak.  My mother used to wear them bright cloaks, and they’re right gradely things again a green field.”

“Han ye known Susan Palmer long?” asked Mrs. Leigh, pleased with the admiration of her cloak.

“Ever since they comed to live in our street.  Our Sally goes to her school.”

“Whatten sort of a lass is she, for I ha’ never seen her?”

“Well, as for looks, I cannot say.  It’s so long since I first knowed her, that I’ve clean forgotten what I thought of her then.  My master says he never saw such a smile for gladdening the heart.  But maybe it’s not looks you’re asking about.  The best thing I can say of her looks is, that she’s just one a stranger would stop in the street to ask help from if he needed it.  All the little childer creeps as close as they can to her; she’ll have as many as three or four hanging to her apron all at once.”

“Is she cocket at all?”

“Cocket, bless you! you never saw a creature less set up in all your life.  Her father’s cocket enough.  No! she’s not cocket any way.  You’ve not heard much of Susan Palmer, I reckon, if you think she’s cocket.  She’s just one to come quietly in, and do the very thing most wanted; little things, maybe, that any one could do, but that few would think on, for another.  She’ll bring her thimble wi’ her, and mend up after the childer o’ nights; and she writes all Betty Harker’s letters to her grandchild out at service; and she’s in nobody’s way, and that’s a great matter, I take it.  Here’s the childer running