Kitabı oku: «Jill: A Flower Girl», sayfa 8

The knowledge had stayed with her during the two or three miserable days which had passed since she had left Howard’s Buildings. Poll was a great deal more ill than she had any idea of. Her constant pain was caused by a terrible malady; her fine constitution was being secretly undermined, and she was not at all fit for the hard, roaming, comfortless life to which she had voluntarily sacrificed herself.

She was in the state when she needed the tenderest care and the most loving nursing. Jill had done everything that a daughter could do for her mother’s comfort; she had given her good and nourishing meals; she had seen that she clothed herself well and rested well; in short, she had surrounded her with a life of comparative refinement and comfort.

Even in that life Poll could scarcely endure her own sufferings; how much greater were they now, when she was going through all the hardships which a roaming existence to a woman in her class meant!

She slept in a common lodging-house at night; she ate when she was hungry; and whenever the terrible thirst seized her she gratified it without a moment’s thought of self-control.

Therefore the three days which had passed had made sad havoc in Poll; she looked years older, her dark face had lost all its comeliness, it was drawn and haggard, and there were many white streaks in her thick raven-black hair. She was going down the hill very fast, both physically and mentally. She knew it, poor soul, and yet until this moment she had never repented of the step she had taken. She had done it with her eyes open, and she said to herself morning, noon, and night:

“I ain’t sorry, for I’m giving my Jill, the best gel as ever breathed, a happy life.”

But now Poll’s head did reel, and Poll’s limbs almost refused to keep her suffering body upright. She had made her sacrifice in vain, for in some way, some extraordinary, unaccountable way, Nat had found out her secret.

Nat knew that Jill was the daughter of a woman who debased herself by drink. The knowledge had come to him, and it had all the worst effects which Poll had dreaded; he was very angry, he was reckless in his anger.

Susy said that Nat himself would now go to the bad. Notwithstanding, therefore, Poll’s sacrifice, Jill’s life would be wrecked.

For some little time Mrs Robinson staggered down the ugly slum into which she had entered, then she ran against a wall, too dull and dazed to proceed another step. A child came up and touched her on the arm – a pinched gutter child, who looked up at her with big eyes partly of affright, partly of indifference.

“Shall I take yer to the nearest public?” she said; “do you want another drop? You’re half seas over now; mother’s orful when she’s only half seas over. You come along to the public and have another drop, and then you won’t know nothink; you’ll be all right then.”

“So you think I’m drunk?” said Poll; “no, I ain’t drunk, there’s a pain here,” panting to her breast, “and a swimming here,” clasping her hand to her forehead; “but I ain’t took enough to make me even half seas over. You seem a good-natured sort of a gel, and maybe ef you lend me your shoulder to lean on, I’d find a copper in my pocket for yer by-and-by.”

The child’s eyes glittered when Poll spoke of a copper.

“Yer may lean on me if yer, like, missis,” she said.

“I want yer to take me to a place called Howard’s Buildings, in Nettle Street,” said Poll. “I can’t see werry well for the giddiness in my head; and I can’t walk werry well, because I has a sort of a trembling all over me; but ef I may use your eyes, little gel, and ef you’ll be a crutch to me, why I’ll give yer thruppence, so there.”

“Howard’s Buildings,” said the child, “I never yered tell on ’em, nor of Nettle Street neither.”

“I can guide yer a bit, honey. Ef you’ll tell me the names of the streets as we pass, I’m most sure to know ’em, and I can tell yer ef we’re going right or wrong. You come close up to me, little gel, and let me lean on yer shoulder.”

The child came up as she was told, and Poll and she began a slow pilgrimage through the slums.

Poll’s head felt as giddy as ever; the pain which seemed to eat into her very life never ceased, the trembling in her legs grew greater, but still she struggled forward. As the sacrifice was in vain, and Jill was miserable without her, why she might at least go back to Howard’s Buildings. This was the only coherent thought she had. She would go back to Jill; she would kiss Jill once again.

Beyond this desire she was incapable of going. If she only kept on walking, putting one trembling foot before the other, she would at last reach the Buildings, and Jill and she would meet again. It seemed to Poll that a whole lifetime had already divided her from the girl; but now if only she could walk, the dreadful separation would come to an end.

“Can’t yer step out a bit faster, missis?” said the little gutter child. “You lean hard on me, and step out, missis; we won’t get to them Buildings – whatever you call ’em – to-night, ef you don’t step out.”

“I’ll try to, dearie,” said Poll; “I’m werry cold though. It’s late, ain’t it, honey? Seems as ef the place was werry dark.”

“Dark,” said the child, “it’s broad day; why, the sun’s shining all over us. Oh, my word, I’m melting up with the heat; and you’re no light weight, missis, I can tell yer.”

“Let me grip hold on yer ’and,” said Poll. “What street are we in now?”

“What street?” laughed the child; “why we’re in the street as we started in; we ain’t gone the length of Sulphur Row.”

“Oh, my God!” said Poll, “I thought as we were hours walking, and that the night had come; you must let me lean up against somethink, for I can’t see.”

“My thruppence first,” said the child.

Poll tried to fumble in her pocket; a waggon was heard lumbering down the street behind them. The driver shouted to the child and woman to get out of the way.

“Oh, missis, come, come!” screamed the little girl; “you’re standing in the road – you’ll be run over – let me pull yer on the path leastways.”

Poll with a great effort staggered forward. The waggon rushed by, almost grazing her feet.

The next instant the poor creature lay prone on the pavement, all consciousness having left her. The child uttered a cry and the usual crowd collected round the prostrate woman.

Two or three policemen came up and examined her.

“Drank,” said one of them impressively.

“No, she ain’t,” said the child; “I asked her that and she said no, she worn’t a bit drank; she had an orful pain and wor werry giddy, and werry trembling in the limbs, but it won’t drink, I tell yer. She spoke real sensible. I know ’em when they drinks, and thet worn’t what ailed her. She wanted me to take her to some Buildings or t’other, and she promised me thruppence. Do you think as I might take it out of her pocket?”

“No, no; get out of this, you little varmint,” said the police. They examined Poll more critically, and finally decided to take her on a shutter to the Bearcat hospital: this happened to be Saint Bartholomew’s.

Chapter Fourteen

Notwithstanding the uses of adversity, it is astonishing how well prosperity agrees with some people. It has much the same sort of effect on them that the sun has on fruit and flowers. All the graces within them which have been invisible while the rough winds of adversity blew, now blossom, and show sweet bits of colour, and little tender, gracious perfumes, which no one would have supposed consistent with such hard, crabbed, in short disagreeable products of nature.

Silas Lynn had all through his life, up to the present day, been visited by the harsh winds of adversity.

It is true they had not come to him in the form of poverty. He was too prudent, too hard-working for poverty to have anything to do with him. But a man can suffer adversity without being poor, and Silas’s life from his cradle up to the present had been a hard one.

Pleasure and he had kept at a distance. The relaxations of existence had never been permitted to him. In short, his life had been all lessons and no play.

Silas was aware of this fact himself, but up to the present he had looked upon it as a good and healthy sign of his soul’s state. His mother had taught him that chastening is the lot of the Christian.

“Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth,” she had said to him so many times, that he whispered it to himself with white lips and a haggard look on his strong face as he bent over her in her coffin.

When his fruit crop failed, and his flowers yielded but poor blooms, he repeated the old text again under his breath, and took comfort from it.

It was a great surprise, therefore, to Silas, when suddenly the old aspect of things altered, and the Lord whom he sincerely loved ceased to chasten. Life was so completely changed to Silas that he scarcely knew himself.

He was going to be married. There was nothing remarkable in the fact in itself – more than one middle-aged woman of the Wesleyan community in his own village would gladly have come to keep house for him. She would, as the expression goes, “make him and mend him.” She would cook for him, and keep his place clean, and spend his money, and be the mother of his children, whom she would bring up in the fear of the Lord.

Silas could have married Eliza Sparkes, or Mary Ann Hatton, or Hannah Martin, and he would have received the congratulations of his friends, and the sincerest good wishes from all quarters, and yet not have been able consciously to say in his heart, “The Lord has ceased to chasten.”

But he was not going to marry a middle-aged woman from the village. He was middle-aged himself, no doubt, nearly forty, but the bride who was soon coming to gladden the old cottage, and vie with the flowers in her beauty, was scarcely more than a child in years.

This wilful, pretty, dainty blossom which he had culled out of the London streets was just the very last wife any one would have expected him to take. She would not be to the taste of the Wesleyans, and he felt that the congratulations and “God speed you” from his friends would be few.

But what mattered these things, when his own heart was singing a psalm of thanksgiving from morning till night, when the flowers in his garden were absolutely riotous in the profusion of their blossoms, when the sun smiled on him, and the dews came at night to refresh him? What did he care for the neighbours, whether they were pleased or not?

During the first fortnight of his engagement to Jill, his own nature took a sudden late blossoming. His gruff voice became a shade lower and more refined in tone, and even Jonathan, his hard-working factotum, ceased to fear Silas.

Master and man were very busy, putting the tiny cottage in order, for the wedding was to be in another week.

On a certain Saturday evening, as Silas was standing in the middle of his flower-beds, contemplating a late crop of enormous carnations, and considering how many boxes he could fill with cut blooms for his Monday’s market, he heard the click of the gate at the far end of the garden path, and saw an elderly woman in a poke bonnet and long cloak advancing to meet him.

“Giminy! ef it ain’t Aunt Hannah!” he muttered under his breath, “Now, whatever’s bringing her bothering round?”

He walked down the path as he spoke, and held out his big hand to his relation.

“Wot’s this I hear, Silas?” said his aunt; “that you’re going to, contract marriage with an unbeliever?”

The little woman had an anxious, wizened face. It was raised now with a world of commiseration in it to Silas.

The man felt so happy that he absolutely smiled down at the audacious little intruder.

“That’s all you know,” he began.

“Oh, don’t I know, Silas! Wot would yer pore mother say ef she were to come alive again, and see this bitter day? Oh, Silas! you that has been brought up on the Bible – han’t you read your Scripter to some purpose? ‘Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain.’ Oh, Silas! Silas! it’s Mary Ann Hatton, or one of them other sober women you ought to be taking to wife.”

“Yes,” said Silas, “and wouldn’t both on us have been as cross as two sticks? I’m taking a bonny bit of a gel to wed, wot’s sweet as a rose to look at, and with a perfume o’ the lavender and the cherry-pie about her. Good inside and out is Jill, and I guess ef Solomon were alive, he’d say as the price of a gel like Jill were above rubies.”

“I heerd tell,” said Aunt Hannah, in a slow voice, “that you was quite gone off yer head, Silas, my man, but I didn’t go to believe it, until I had clapped my own two eyes on yer. I’m mournful, thinkin’ on yer pore mother. But there’s no manner of use in wasting words on a man wot’s gone silly, so I’ll wish yer a werry good-evening.”

“You stay a bit,” said Silas. “Jonathan and me, we are doing up the cottage, and you had ever a cute eye for a good bit of furniture. Come and see what I am doing. I doubt ef you’d know the place.”

With many sighs and groans, Aunt Hannah was induced to enter the cottage. She behaved in a melancholy way when she got inside, for the sight of her sister’s vacant chair provoked a sudden flood of tears, which embarrassed and annoyed Silas.

“Eh dear, eh dear,” she sobbed, “to think of the last time I ha’ seen pore Maria a-bolstered up in that cheer. She had the asthmey awful, and she said to me, ‘Hannah, it ketches me most when I lies down.’ She said them words over and over, and I don’t think I ever heerd anything more mournful. Eh, and ef that ain’t the lavender I see’d her put in with her own hands into that identical muslin bag, my name ain’t Hannah Royal! Oh, Silas! it’s wonderful how you can go agin a mother like that!”

“I ain’t a-going agin her,” said Silas; “you shet up now, Aunt Hannah, you has said enough. Wot do you think of this table and chair as I has bought? And this rug to put in front of the stove? Come now, give us your opinion; it’s worth having.”

Thus appealed to Aunt Hannah immediately wiped her tears, and going down on her knees began to feel the texture of the rug, and to put it up to her nose, and to sniff at it, and then hold it between herself and the light.

“I misdoubt me that it ain’t made with three threads across,” she said, laying it down with some contempt. “And the colour’s too flashy for my taste. I like a drab ground, with a teeny sprig of purple on it. Let me look at that ’ere table. You don’t mean to tell me, Silas, as you has gone and bought a meehogany table? Don’t yer know as sech a table is sinful waste to a man in your station?”

“It were goin’ dirt cheap,” said Silas, in an apologetic tone.

“I misdoubt me that it’s worm-eat,” said Aunt Hannah. “And as to this cheer, its creak would turn a body silly. Well, is there anything else for me to see?”

“There’s a crate in that corner, full of cups and saucers, and plates and dishes.”

“Chaney?” said Aunt Hannah, “I’m a jedge of that. I’ll unpack the crate ef you wish, Silas.”

“Well, do,” said Silas, “I’ll be obleeged. I can manage flowers, but I ’ates touching chaney. It seems to slip out of yer fingers, however careful you air. You unpack the crate, missis, and we’ll have a cup of tea together.”

Silas proceeded to light the fire, and put the kettle on to boil, and Aunt Hannah unpacked the crate which contained the cups and saucers, and plates, and dishes, with which Jill was to help to furnish her new home.

If there were one thing more than another for which Mrs Royal had a truly worldly affection, it was for “chaney.” She was a good judge of all house furniture, but with regard to “chaney” she felt herself a specialist. She was as knowing on this point as Silas was with regard to the best blooms and the choicest cuttings. The task, therefore, to which she now set herself was quite to her mind.

Silas had not dared to choose the tea-service and the plates and dishes himself – he had asked a friend of his to buy them for him, and to have them sent down to the cottage. When Aunt Hannah, therefore, removed the paper wrapper from a delicate cup of white and gilt, with a blue convolvulus lying across the saucer, and sending its delicate tendrils round the cup, he came and gazed at the lovely specimens with a certain quickening of his pulses, and a queer inclination in his eyes to water.

“I say!” he exclaimed, “I never thought as chaney would look like that.”

“It’s most onsuitable,” said Aunt Hannah. “But I don’t deny as it’s neat. My word, I only hope as that gel will have deft fingers, or she’ll be crackin’ and splittin’ this yere fragile chaney. You don’t mean to say, Silas, as you’ll use it hevery day? You are sinnin a’most past knowin’ you, but I don’t s’pose as you’ll go the awful depths of using this yere chaney hevery day.”

“That must be as Jill pleases,” said Silas.

“Giminy! I never did know as chaney could look like this, it seems to add a fresh pleasure to life – why, it a’most beats the flowers.”

“I won’t deny that it ain’t a werry neat pattern,” said Aunt Hannah, “the twist of convolvuly is werry cunnin’, but chaney like that is meant to lock up in a cupboard; there ain’t no one as ’ud use it daily.”

“Look here,” said Silas, “there’s a power of cups and saucers ain’t there, Aunt Hannah?”

“My word, yes,” said Aunt Hannah, “a whole, dozen, and plates to match, and four fruit dishes, and a couple of cake plates, and a slop-bowl and a teapot, and a cream jug and sugar basin – it’s the most complete thing I iver seed.”

“Well, then, look yere,” said Silas, “s’pose as we has a tea-drinkin’ out o’ it.”

“Silas!” Aunt Hannah dropped her lower jaw and her small eyes grew beady bright in their glance.

“S’pose,” continued Silas, “we had a tea-drinkin’ out of it, and we asked Jill down, and one or two o’ the neighbours to meet her, and you come and spend the night here, Aunt Hannah, and you ondertake the tea-drinkin’ – s’pose now you do that, eh?”

“Well,” said Aunt Hannah, “it seems like encouraging of you, Silas, in your mad folly.”

“Not a bit on it,” said Lynn, “for whether you come or whether you go, Jill and me we’ll be married at the church in the village come next Thursday. You can please yerself, Aunt Hannah, but I thought as we might have our tea-drinkin’ on Tuesday, and you’d see with your own eyes, and the neighbours ’ud see, what sort of a little gel were coming home to me to cheer up my life.”

“Well,” said Aunt Hannah, “I don’t go fer to deny that there’s something in your idee, Silas. I own as I’d like to say a word to that gel on the subject of chaney like this. Ef I found her teachable and humble in her notions, I don’t promise, mind, but I might give her three cracked delf cups of my own – white they was once, but they has turned yeller – she could use ’em for common and keep this chaney for best, for christenings, and sech-like, and the delf cups ’ud be a very suitable present from your aunt to her, Silas.”

“You can do that as you please,” said Silas. “Air we to have the tea-drinkin’, or air we not, Aunt Hannah?”

“I think, hall things considerin’, that it ’ud be right to have it,” said Aunt Hannah, in a solemn voice. “In a matter o’ this sort it’s right to consider the waluables, and this chaney is altogether out of the common. The first thing to be done is to scald it, and that I’ll manage for yer on Monday morning, Silas, for I’ll bring over my own wooden pail, and gradually heat each cup and each saucer in hot water, until it’ll bear the heat when it comes to the bile. It’s wonderful careless of gels in these days, they’ll crack the finest chaney for not knowing how properly to scald it afore usin’.”

“That’s settled then,” said Silas. “I’ll speak to Jill to-morrow, and we’ll ask Mr Hibberty Jones and his wife, and Mary Ann Hatton to come to tea, and ef Mr Peters ’ud honour us as well we’d be proud to see him. You’ll see to the victuals, won’t you, Aunt Hannah?”

“Yes, you leave that to me,” said Aunt Hannah. “That girl ’ull eat a cake worth eating for the first time in her life – and now I must be goin’ ’ome.”

Chapter Fifteen

Jill was quite willing to accompany Silas home for the tea-drinking. He told her about it on Sunday when he went to see her in her little flat.

“Yer to come down looking as peart as you can. Jill,” he said to her. “The folks in Newbridge beats all folks livin’ for contrariness. They think that God Almighty did right when He made a lovely flower, and mortal wrong when He made a lovely woman. They think as sweetness and beauty can go together in flowers but not in gels, so I want you to look your werry beat, my dainty little cuttin’, and show ’em as they are all hout for once in their reckonin’s. I’m thinkin’ as maybe yer would like a new bit of a gownd; what do yer say to a yaller cotton now, made werry stylish? I don’t mind paying a real good dressmaker to put it together. Come, now, would you like it, ah?”

“No, thank you, Silas,” said Jill. “I’ll feel more at home like in my old black gownd, which has in a sort of a way growed to me. I’d like best to wear that with a bit of a posy that you’ll pick out of the garden fresh for me when I get down.”

“You’re to stay for the night, mind, when you do come,” said Silas. “An aunt o’ mine, a Mrs Royal, a werry decent body, can share my bed with yer, and I’ll go and have a shake-down at Peters’s. You’ll be sure to come in good time, and a-lookin’ yer best; Jill.”

“Yes, Silas,” she replied, with a meekness which would have puzzled him very much had he known her better. He was too happy and content, however, for even the faintest suspicion of anything not being quite right to enter his mind.

Jill Robinson was like the mignonette and the lavender and the cherry-pie for sweetness of character, while she resembled the crimson rose-bud in the richness of her beauty.

Yes, surely the Lord had given up chastening Silas when so great a prize as Jill was to be his.

The invited guests were only too eager to come to the tea-drinking. Notwithstanding the disapproval of the congregation at Silas’s choice, those of them who were favoured with an invitation to see his bride were by no means slow of availing themselves of it.

Mrs Hibberty Jones and Miss Mary Ann Hatton went, it is true, under a protest, but Hibberty Jones himself and Peters owned that they did not object to seeing beauty when they could do so in a good cause. It was distinctly to Silas’s advantage that the foremost members of the congregation should support him at this critical juncture, and if possible take early steps to convert Jill to her future husband’s faith. So, dressed in their best, the homely village folk walked across the fields, on this lovely summer’s evening, to Silas Lynn’s tea-drinking.

Silas had ordered a new suit of strong rough frieze for his wedding. The suit had been made in a great hurry by the village tailor, and was sombre both in its cut and its colour. But the gloomy effect of coat and trousers was much relieved by a gay waistcoat of white with a coloured sprig bedecking it all over. This waistcoat had belonged to Silas’s father, and was regarded in the family as a very precious heirloom. He wore in his button-hole three large crimson carnations, and altogether made an imposing spectacle as he stood in the porch of the little cottage to receive his visitors.

Aunt Hannah was busy inside the house. She wore a dark plum-coloured dress, and a little tight black net cap, tied under her chin with a bow of yellow ribbon.

Jill had not yet arrived, and Silas, while he held out his great hands in hearty greeting to his visitors, could not help letting his eyes wander anxiously up the path which led from the railway station direct to the cottage.

“How do you do, Mr Lynn?” said Miss Mary Ann Hatton in an acrid voice. “Allow me to congratulate you. Oh, pray don’t let us keep your hattention. Where the heyes stray is where the ’eart is to be found. Ain’t that so, Mrs Jones?”

“It ain’t modest to speak o’ them sort of things aloud,” said Mrs Jones, in a hushed voice to the spinster. “Don’t let yer feelin’s get the better of yer, Mary Ann – you’re disappointed, but keep it dark, for the sake of feminine modesty. Well, Mr Lynn, we’re proud to come and meet this young gel what is soon to be yer wife. Have she come yet? Or are you looking for ’er over the brow of the ’ill, that you keep your eye fixed on that one pint so constant?”

“She ain’t come, but I’m expectin’ of her every minute,” said Silas. “I’m real proud to welcome yer, neighbours. Come in, come in. My aunt, Mrs Royal, is in the house a-brewing the tea. Come in, neighbours, and make yerselves at home.”

Mr and Mrs Hibberty Jones and Miss Hatton stepped immediately across the threshold, but old Mr Peters stood still, and put one of his wrinkled hands, with marked solemnity, on Silas Lynn’s shoulder.

“Wanity of wanity, Silas,” he said in a mournful tone. “I didn’t think as you’d have been tuk in by a bit of a gel to the extent of wearin’ a flowered waistcoat. You has had a sudden fall, Silas.”

“Go right into the house, Mr Peters,” said Silas. “There Jill a-coming down the field. You look at her, and tell me arterwards ef you think she wor worthy of a sprigged waistcoat or not.”

When Jill and Silas entered the little cottage side by side, the rest of the visitors were seated in some impatience round the tea-table. The board was well supplied with a large brown cake in the centre, a freshly cooked ham at one end, and the tea equipage, containing the delicate white and gold tea-service, at the other. Bread in great junks, hot cake, butter in several fancy devices, and a large dish of honey completed the repast.

Hibberty Jones had placed himself as near that end of the table where the ham stood as possible. Miss Hatton sat pensively where she could keep control of the honey, and Mrs Hibberty Jones made up her mind that she would act as cutler of the cake.

When Silas and Jill entered the whole company arose, and each in turn offered a cold handshake to the London flower girl. Room was made for her to sit down beside Silas at the end of the board, and Aunt Hannah, with a loud “a-hem,” lifted the teapot to dispense the tea.

“May I ask, Mrs Jones,” she inquired, “’ow you like your tea sarved, or ef you has no wishes on the subjec’? Some folk ain’t particular, but it’s best to know.”

“I ain’t what’s called particular,” said Mrs Jones.

“No honey, I thank you, Miss Hatton – but I likes my tea to lay for a good eight or ten minutes arter it is made. I will own that I likes it bitter; flavoured with one spoonful of thick rich cream and three good lumps of castor sugar. Jones goes in for four lumps, but I say so much sugar is apt to lay heavy, so three’s my quantity. I’ll trouble you not to give me more than one teaspoonful of cream, Mrs Royal.”

“Sech strong tea is wonderful bad for the narves,” said Miss Hatton. “May I ask, miss,” turning to Jill, “’ow you takes it in the City? I’m told, but I don’t know ef it’s true, that you mostly uses our tea-leaves over agen.”

“I don’t think it’s true,” replied Jill, “though maybe there air some folks poor enough even for that.” She raised her great dark eyes as she spoke, and looked sadly at Miss Hatton.

The spinster turned away with a toss of her head. “Why, she’s foreign,” she muttered. “It’s worse even than I feared.”

“I have no doubt, miss, whatever, that you always drinks the best o’ tea,” said Hibberty Jones with a gallant bow. “So purty a bit of a young gel couldn’t but have the werry best.”

“Quite so – I agrees with you, Mr Jones,” said Mr Peters.

The women could not forbear snorting audibly, and Miss Hatton in her agitation dropped a spoonful of honey on the white cloth, and the next moment one of the delicate white saucers with the convolvulus lying across its smooth surface had been pushed by her awkward elbow on to the floor. It lay there in shivers. Aunt Hannah gave an unearthly groan, and Silas felt the purple colour of rage dyeing his face.

“Don’t say a word, Silas,” said Jill in a soft tone.

She sprang lightly to her feet, ran round to Miss Hatton’s side, picked up the broken crockery, which she put out of sight, placed another saucer beside Miss Hatton’s plate, and returned to her place by Silas.

Her little action was so swift and graceful, and the lovely colour which mantled her cheeks was so becoming, that the three men could not help expressing their approval by a low sort of underground cheer.

“You have a kind heart, I see, my lass,” said old Peters; “a kind heart as well as a purty face. I never knew ’em go together afore. I divided the world o’ women afore into two lots. There was the illigant faymales, with their fine faces, and their fine walk, and their fine bits o’ ways; and there was the plain, downright women, like my old missis, wot died, and like our good friend, Mrs Hibberty Jones” (Mrs Hibberty Jones turned white with suppressed anger at this marked allusion to her present appearance), “and like Miss Hatton,” continued Peters, “sterling bodies both o’ them, but awk’ard outside. We must own as plain women is awk’ard outside. Well, I thought as the plain ’uns were the good ’uns, and the purty ’uns the bad ’uns. Never thought as they’d get mixed; never did, never. But the ways of the Lord are wonderful, and I can’t but b’lieve that there’s a purty nature inside that bonny face o’ yourn, my gel.”

Jill received old Mr Peters’s rather embarrassing compliments with a calm indifference that greatly amazed the three other women present.

“I don’t think nobody ought to think o’ looks one way or t’other,” she said, after a pause. “We’re as we’re made – it’s the inside as is everything. I never know’d kind, rich, grand sort of folks like these here afore. I wor brought up rough, although I don’t like roughness; and some o’ the people I has met were real ugly in feature, but oh, the ’earts in ’em – the kindness o’ ’em – the beautiful look as love had put in their eyes. I don’t think the looks matters at all, it’s the ’earts as is everything.”

Jill looked so sweet when she said this that even the angry women were appeased, and Miss Hatton, suddenly moving her chair, made room for Jill to sit opposite the honey.