Chapter IX: Part 9

“Bethia, my dear!” protested Mrs. Masters feebly. “There, she’ve a-got sich a spirit, Mr. Fowler, you must excuse her. She be a bit vexed, you see, wi’ you findin’ fault wi’ her. I’m sure, the longer you stay, Mr. Fowler, the better we’m pleased. We’ve nothin’ much fit to offer ye, but if ye’d like to sit down and take a bit wi’ us you’re truly welcome.”

Bethia shot an indignant glance towards her parent, and Jacob stood hesitating for a moment; then with a laugh he drew up his chair to the table.

“I’ll not refuse a good offer,” he said.

Bethia fetched a plate, knife and fork, and glass, setting each before him with somewhat unnecessary clatter. Then she served up the vegetables, brought out a roll of butter and a small piece of cheese from the buttery, and took her place in silence.

“I’m sorry,” began Mrs. Masters regretfully, “we’ve got nothing better to offer ye, Mr. Fowler. My daughter and me seldom eats meat of a week day.”

“Don’t make excuses, Mother,” interrupted Bethia, with asperity. “Mr. Fowler knows very well that we are poor.”

The meal proceeded in silence for the most part, Mrs. Masters making an occasional remark, to which Jacob responded by a gruff monosyllable. Bethia did not speak once, but had never looked prettier in her life; the angry sparkle still lingered in her eyes, and her cheeks were flushed. Whenever she glanced at the visitor her countenance took on an additional expression of haughtiness.

At the end of the repast Jacob stood up. “I’d like a word wi’ ye private, Miss Masters.”

“Oh, I beg pardon, I’m sure,” apologised the poor old mother, hastening to efface herself.

As soon as her heavy footsteps were heard in the room upstairs the farmer turned to Bethia.

“I’ve a-come to see ye friendly like,” he remarked, “and I’ll come again. I ax ye, as a friend, my maid--will ye gie this notion up?”

Bethia looked if possible more indignant than before.

“No, Mr. Fowler,” she returned promptly, “I tell you--as a friend--I won’t.”

“Then you’ll ha’ trouble wi’ I, I warn ’ee,” responded he, almost with a groan.

Jacob Fowler kept his word, and gave the poor little rate-collector an inconceivable amount of trouble.

He took no notice whatever of her demand-notes and official reminders; and when she called to see him in person, though he received her with civility and even undisguised pleasure, he resolutely refused to part with a farthing. The friendliness with which he hailed her advent, and entered into conversation on indifferent subjects, gave place to a rigid silence as soon as she touched on the motive of her visit, and he would shake his head fiercely as often as she reverted to the point.

One day she found him in what she took to be a softened mood. It was in the spring, and the consciousness that it was grand weather for potato-setting, added to the recollection of a long and successful day’s work, had put Jacob in an unusually good humour. He was smoking in his porch when she drew near, and at once invited her to sit down and rest.

“You do look a bit tired, my maid,” he remarked; “tired and worried.”

“I am tired and worried too,” said Bethia, looking up at him appealingly. “I’m afraid of getting into trouble, Mr. Fowler.”

“Oh,” said Jacob, “how’s that?”

“They will be down on me for not sending in the money regularly,” returned the girl tremulously; “I’ve got it all in except yours.”

Jacob, instead of immediately becoming wooden of aspect, as was his wont, gazed at her searchingly. “You’d be all right if you was to get mine?” he inquired.

“Yes--oh, yes, Mr. Fowler. Couldn’t you pay up and have done with it?”

Jacob shook his head, but this time apparently more in sorrow than in anger.

“Can’t be done, my maid. I’ve a-passed my word, d’ye see, and I be forced to stick to it.”

“I think you are very unkind,” said Bethia; “you are trying to force me to give up one of the few ways I have of making a living.”

“E-es,” said Jacob, “’tis true; ’tis the very thing I be a-doin’. You said if I didn’t pay up you’d make me--well, how be you a-goin’ for to make me?”

“Oh, I suppose I’ll have to send you a summons,” cried she, with gathering anger. “’Tis my duty and I must do it.”

Jacob’s face changed. The colour mounted in his brown cheeks, and when he spoke his voice was unsteady with surprise and wrath.

“You don’t mean that,” he said quickly. “You’d never do it.”

“I’ll have to do it,” said Bethia, “if you force me to proceed to extremes. Oh, Mr. Fowler,” she added, almost passionately, “can’t you be sensible; can’t you make an end of it once and for all? If I’d been a man instead of a girl you wouldn’t persecute me like this. You’d think it quite natural for me to want to take my father’s place, wouldn’t you? What difference does it make? I can keep the accounts, and make the applications, just as well as any man. Why should you try to bully me?”

“Now look ’ee here, my maid,” said Jacob, “if you come to that, ’tis you what be a-tryin’ for to bully I. I’ve a-set my face again this ’ere notion. No respectable young ’ooman did ought to go a-trapesin’ fro’ one house to t’other, a puttin’ herself for’ard and a-coaxin’ folks out o’ their money, whether it be for the Government or whether it bain’t. ’Tis a question between us two which can hold out longest. Now if you was to give in to I----”

“Well,” said Bethia, bending forward with unconscious eagerness, “what would happen if I were to give in to you?”

Jacob took out his pipe and stared at her, and then he got up and paced about the little flagged path.

“What would happen?” she repeated sharply. “What would you advise me to do?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” returned Jacob confusedly. “I haven’t had time for to think o’ that.”

It was now Bethia’s turn to spring to her feet. “I think you are hard, and obstinate, and cruel! Yes, cruel, to try and put upon my poor mother and me! But I’ll have an end of this shilly-shally work; you shall be forced to pay, sir.”

She hastened down the path. Jacob, after delaying a moment to lay his pipe carefully in a corner of the seat, strode after her and opened the garden gate, holding it for a moment so that she could not pass through.

Bethia glanced at him. He did not look angry, but resolute; his jaw was firmly set and his eyes steady. It struck her forcibly that he had a good face--honest, open, manly--and she realised with a little pang that it was probably turned towards her for the last time in friendship.

“I’ll give you a month,” she said waveringly.

“Ye mid as well say a year,” returned Jacob. “’Twill be all the same.”

Thereupon he opened the gate and she went away.

The allotted time of grace passed very slowly, and though Bethia continued to post a little demand-note every week, no notice was taken either of her appeal or of herself.

Late on the last day of the month she was making her way back from the town with a very melancholy face, when, at a turn in the road, she suddenly encountered Jacob; Jacob in holiday attire, carrying a large nosegay of monthly roses and lilac.

“Hullo, my maid,” he cried genially, “well met! I were just a-goin’ to see you.”

“Were you?” returned Bethia, in a very small constrained voice.

“E-es, I was a-bringin’ you these here flowers. I seed ’em i’ th’ garden just now, and I thought you’d like ’em.”

“Oh, Mr. Fowler, you shouldn’t give them to me!” cried the girl with a catch in her voice. “I’ve--I’ve just been and taken out a summons against you.”

“Oh, and have you?” said Jacob staring at her. “Well, that’s summat.”

“Yes,” returned Bethia desperately. “I waited till the end of the month, and then I had to do it; it was my duty. Oh, dear; oh, dear!”

“Well, to think on’t,” said Jacob, still apparently more surprised than angry. “Lard ha’ mercy! That be a pretty thing for a maid to do.”

“So you’d best take back your flowers,” broke out Bethia. “I know everything’s at an end between us. I’ve quite made up my mind to it.”

“Ah,” said Jacob, eyeing her thoughtfully; “’tis queer once folks makes up their minds how a notion will stick i’ their heads. Now all this month I’ve been a-thinkin’ and a-thinkin’--I never was one to do a thing in a hurry--but at last I reckoned I’d got it settled. ‘I’ll do it,’ I says, ‘I’ll ax the maid to marry I--that’ll be the best way out of it. She’ll not want to go again’ I then,’ I says. And you go and summons me.”

Bethia burst out crying. “Oh, Jacob,” she cried, “why couldn’t you have done it before? If you had asked me kindly--if you had told me to give up for your sake, I--I--I----”

She broke off, sobbing bitterly.

“’Tis true,” said Jacob regretfully, “I mid ha’ axed ye a bit softer--I mid ha’ spoke a bit more kind--but you did go and put my back up with stickin’ to the notion so obstinate. Says I to myself, ‘So soon as ever she gives in I’ll ax her--but she must give in’--and you wouldn’t. So then I thought--‘Dally! I’ll ax her first and then we’ll see.’ And then you go and put the law on me afore I’ve time to open my mouth.”

“Oh, Jacob! I waited a whole month,” protested Bethia, almost inarticulately; “and you never said anything, and I thought you didn’t care about me, and it seemed to be my duty.”

She covered her face with her hands. Jacob stared at her for a moment, and then suddenly slapped his thigh and burst into a roar of laughter.

“I d’ ’low the maid done it out o’ pique,” he cried ecstatically, “I d’ ’low she did! She did do it along of her feelin’s bein’ hurt with me a-holdin’ back so long. That’s a different story, my dear--a different story altogether! I bain’t one to bear malice along o’ that; ’twas but nat’ral arter all. E-es, I d’ ’low I be a terrible slow-coach; but, ye see, I’d a-got set i’ my bachelor ways, and it did take I a long time for to make up my mind; and then, as I do tell ’ee, I wur a-waitin’ and expectin’ for you to give in. But I’ve spoke now, and if you’ll say the word, my dear, all can be forgive and forgot.”

Bethia presumably did speak the word, for she resigned her post as tax-collector that very evening, and she and her Jacob were “asked in church” on the following Sunday.

As for that matter of the summons, it was settled “out of court”.

THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT.

Daniel Chaffey stood poised on a step-ladder nailing up the fine Gloire de Dijon rose which was trailed over the wall of his house. He had already performed the same operation for the jessamine which grew over the porch and for the purple clematis on the right of it. He had tied his dahlias so tightly and firmly to a variety of newly cut stakes, that each individual scarlet bloom reminded one in some measure of a choleric old gentleman suffering from a tight and high shirt-collar. He had scraped the little path till the cobble-stones of which it was composed stood revealed each almost in its entirety. From his exalted position he could survey the whole frontage of his own roof--a sight in which an artist would have revelled, for not only was the thatch itself mellowed by time and weather to the most exquisite variety of tones, but on its mouldering surface had sprung up a multitude of blooms, vying in brightness with those of the garden beneath--not merely your common everyday mosses and lichens, though patches of these were to be found in every shade of emerald and topaz and silver, but flowers, real flowers, seemed to thrive there; saxifrages, toad-flax, snap-dragon, and, just where the bedroom gable jutted out, a flaming bunch of poppies. It will be seen from this that Daniel Chaffey’s house was an old one; it bore a date over the door, cut roughly in the weather-beaten stone--1701. It had mullioned windows with diamond panes, and an oaken door studded with nails. It had indeed once been the village schoolhouse, though the Chaffey family had been in possession of it now for many generations, and had farmed, more or less successfully, the small holding attached to it.

Daniel, himself, looked prosperous enough as he stood hammering and whistling, and occasionally pausing with his head on one side, and his mouth screwed up but emitting no sound, to survey his handiwork. He was a bullet-headed young man of about four or five-and-twenty, with twinkling blue eyes, and a face, the natural ruddy tone of which was overlaid by such a fine veneer of sunburn that it was now of a uniform brick-colour. His expression was jovial, not to say jocular; his mouth wore an habitual grin when it was not whistling, and on this particular occasion some inward source of jollity appeared to entertain him, for he not only frequently chuckled but winked to himself.

Having inserted the last tack into the crumbling wall, he paused, removing his hat and scratching his head meditatively; for the first time his face wore a somewhat serious, not to say puzzled expression, and his eyes travelled dubiously over the flaunting array of blossoming weeds on the roof.

“I wonder,” quoth Daniel to himself, “if ’twould look better if I was to scrape out them there. Maybe the thatch wouldn’t hold together, though--it’s a-been agrowed over sich a-many year, I d’ ’low I’ll let ’em bide--they do look well enough where they be.”

And, after coming to this decision, he was preparing to descend from the ladder when he was suddenly hailed by a chorus of voices from the lane on the other side of his garden-hedge.

“Hello, Dan’l!”--“Hallo, old cock!”--“Well, bwoy, bist getten’ all to rights afore weddin’?”

Daniel put on his hat and turned slowly round on his rung.

“E-es,” he said, grinning sheepishly, “that’s about it. The job’s to be done the day arter to-morrow.”

A party of young men had halted just outside his little gate; it was Saturday and, though only five o’clock, their field-work was over and they were now on their way to the allotments; a rough, sunburnt, merry-looking group, most of them bearing the marks of the day’s toil on heated face and earth-stained apparel; one or two of them with spade and fork on shoulder, others with dangling empty sacks. September was drawing to a close and potato-getting was in full swing. It was observable that as they addressed Chaffey, each man assumed a knowing and jocular air; this one nudged his neighbour, that one winked at Daniel himself.

“You’m to be called home for last time to-morrow, bain’t ye, Dan’l?” inquired Abel Bolt, elbowing himself to the front.

“E-es,” responded Daniel, “we be to be called last time to-morrow an’ tied-up o’ Monday.”

Abel threw back his head and laughed uproariously.

“I should like to come to your weddin’, Dan!” he cried ecstatically, “I d’ ’low I should.”

“Ye won’t, though,” retorted Chaffey. “Ye’ll be jist in the thick o’ your ploughin’--I thought o’ that. I axed the Reverend to fix time a-purpose. No, we’ll be wed on the quiet, Phœbe an’ me--I settled that.”

“There, ’tis real ill-natured o’ you, Dan,” cried one of the youths, looking archly at his comrades. “Sich a pretty sight as ’twill be. Sure it will! And your missus, sich a beauty!”

“Haw, haw, haw!” came the chorus again.

“Her eyes, now,” giggled Abel, “’twill be sich a convenience for the man to have a missus what can keep one eye on the dinner an’ t’other on the garden.”

“An’ her figure,” said Jarge Vacher, “did ye have to make the gate anyways larger, Dan?”

“No, there’d be no need for that,” returned Abel, before Daniel could open his mouth. “The woman could get in very nicely sideways, more pertick’ler since she can see all round her like.”

Chaffey’s complexion had been gradually deepening from crimson to purple, and from purple to a fine rich mahogany, his smile had widened to an extent that was positively painful, but he spoke with unimpaired good humour.

“Neighbours, you may laugh, but I do know what I’m about. I do know very well Phœbe Cosser bain’t a beauty, but she’s good, and I d’ ’low she’ll make I comfortable--an’ that’s the main p’int to look to. She mid be a bit older nor what I be----”

Here the irreverent group in the road began to nudge each other and chuckle afresh; Chaffey sat down suddenly on the top of his ladder.

“What I d’ say, neighbours, is,” he began, “what my notion be--if ye’d give over sniggering for a moment,” he cried with gathering ire, “I could make it plain to ye.”

But they wouldn’t give over; the merriment increased instead of diminishing, and at last Daniel, exclaiming that he would be dalled if he stood it any longer, leaped to the ground, and, dashing into his house, bolted the door behind him.

His friends, trooping into the little garden, serenaded him with a ballad which they thought suitable to his case, and having goaded him into declaring he would come out in a minute and break their heads for them, withdrew in good order and pursued their interrupted course to the allotments.

Daniel waited until the last heavy footfall had died away, the last battered hat brim disappeared, and then came forth with a vengeful expression on his usually good-tempered face. He picked up the hammer and nails which he had scattered in his flight, shouldered his ladder and carried it round to the little shed in the rear, and then came back slowly to resume his labours in the garden.

“She be a good ’un,” he muttered to himself, “let ’em say what they like, she be.”

He paused to uplift and secure a tuft of golden rod which had fallen across the path.

“I never did take so mich notice of her eyes,” he said to himself. “They bain’t so crooked as that comes to--they can see well enough, and that’s the p’int.”

He plucked out a tuft of groundsel which had hitherto escaped his vigilant eye.

“There’s nothin’ so much amiss wi’ her shape neither--I d’ ’low I’d sooner have a nice little comfortable round-about woman nor a great gawky faymale like a zowel or a speaker. If she’s pluffy, she’s sprack, an’ that’s the p’int.”

Whenever Daniel uttered this last phrase he seemed to pluck up courage, and a momentary cheerfulness returned to his face, which, nevertheless, speedily became overcast again. Dall it all, he thought, why couldn’t folks keep their tongues quiet. What was it to them what kind of missus Daniel chose, that they must come tormenting and ballyragging him? He didn’t meddle wi’ nobody, and didn’t want nobody to meddle wi’ he, but there, even the lord’s roughrider stopped him on the road to deliver, as his opinion, that he, Daniel, had chosen a plain-headed one. Old Mrs. Inkpen of the shop had laughed at him for marrying a woman so many years older than himself. Well, she’d be all the more sensible.

“Let ’em laugh if they do have a mind to; it’ll not hurt Phœbe and I. We’ll soon show ’em who’s in the right.”

And with that, he heaved a sigh and went indoors.

Next day he went to call for Phœbe, whom he had promised to escort to afternoon church. She stood awaiting him in her own doorway, which she filled up pretty well it must be owned--a little ball of a woman with the ugliest, merriest face it was possible to conceive. She wore a very fine purple hat with a feather in the middle and two red roses on each side, and this arrangement of headgear seemed to accentuate the somewhat roving propensities of her eyes. Pinned to her jacket was a bunch of natural roses that vied with these in hue, and in one stout hand she waved a posy, similar in colour and almost equal in size, which was intended for her swain.

At sight of her bright face Daniel forgot all his troubles, and after bestowing a sounding salute on her hard red cheek, stood straight and stiff to be decorated, then, “Come along, my dear,” said he, and they set forth arm-in-crook, entirely satisfied with each other.

Nevertheless, as they walked through the churchyard, Daniel was conscious of a dawning sense of discomfort, for was not that Abel Bolt who stood under the yew tree, and who stepped aside with such exaggerated deference to let them pass? Even his hat seemed to Daniel to be cocked with a sarcastic air. Martha Hansford and Freza Pitcher nudged each other as Phœbe preceded him up the church--he was almost sure he saw Martha spread out her hands in allusion to Phœbe’s figure, which certainly looked particularly ample in her thick cloth jacket. To increase his uneasiness Jarge Vacher took up his position immediately behind him. It must be owned that this proximity was seriously detrimental to poor Daniel’s devotions. When Phœbe found the place for him and invited him to sing out of her own hymn-book he heard a choking sound in his rear, which he knew proceeded from Jarge. As he stole a cautious glance round he observed that the eyes of more than one member of the congregation were directed towards him and the unconscious Phœbe, who happened to be in particularly fine voice and was singing away with entire satisfaction. Daniel fidgeted and reddened and grew more and more wrathful. He couldn’t see anything to laugh at, not he. The maid was right to sing out, and to be a bit more tender than usual to the man who, before twenty-four hours were out, would be her husband. Yes, it would be all over by this time to-morrow--that was one comfort; and it was a mercy he had fixed an early hour; none of these impudent chaps would be there to dather him.

At the conclusion of the service he started up and hurried from the church with what seemed to Phœbe, as she waddled in his wake, unseemly haste. Indeed they very nearly had their first serious “miff” on the subject. However, once out of sight of the mockers, and wandering with his sweetheart in the quiet lanes, where the hedgerows were all ablaze with scarlet berries, and primrose and amber leaves made little points of light here and there amid the more sober September green, he forgot his discomfiture.

“We be like to have a hard winter,” said Phœbe, as they paused to look over the first gate in the prescribed fashion of rustic lovers.

“I don’t care,” returned Daniel, gazing at her amourously from beneath his tilted hat. “I’ve got a snug little place of my own and a missus to make me comfortable. It may snow for all as I do care.”

Alas for Daniel! His jubilation was short-lived. Early on the morrow he was up and doing, putting the final touches to his preparations for welcoming his bride, and he set forth in good time to join the wedding party, whom he found ready and waiting for him, sitting stiffly in a row in the parlour. Mr. Cosser, magnificent in broadcloth and his father’s deerskin waistcoat; Mrs. Cosser in a violet gown and a Paisley shawl; Dick Cosser, Phœbe’s younger brother, in a suit of checks that would set an æsthetic person’s teeth on edge; Phœbe herself in a crimson silk with a white hat and a fluffy tippet, over which her eyes twinkled with most uncanny effect. Daniel privately thought she looked very well, and extended his arm to his future mother-in-law, with a bosom swelling with pride. Mr. Cosser had already preceded them with Phœbe, and Dick brought up the rear with his cousin Mary Ann, a tall maid of sixteen, who had an unusual capacity for giggling; these two were to officiate respectively as best man and bridesmaid. Daniel’s parents had long been dead, and most of his relations scattered, but his married sister who lived at some little distance, had promised to drive over and meet them at the church. She and her husband and their three or four olive-branches were, in fact, already installed in one of the front pews when the little procession arrived; the clergyman was in readiness, and the ceremony began without delay.

All went well at first; Phœbe was jubilant and extremely audible in her replies, Daniel gruff and sheepish as it behoved a rustic bridegroom to be, but just as the Rector uplifting his voice inquired “Dost thou take this woman to be thy wedded wife?” a certain scuffling sound was heard at the further end of the church, and the half-made husband might have been seen to start and falter. “Daniel, wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?” repeated the Rector sternly.

Suppressed titters were heard, not only from the direction of the porch, but actually from the aisles. For the life of him, Daniel could not resist turning his head right and left with an anguished gaze. Horror! There was Abel Bolt peering from behind one pillar, and surely that was Jarge’s impudent face grinning at him from the opposite side. The Rector glared through his spectacles and uplifted his voice yet more.

“Daniel!” he cried emphatically, “wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?”

The best man cleared his throat warningly, and the bride turning a reproachful glance somewhere in the direction of the west window, nudged him with her elbow.

“Speak up!” she whispered. This was the last straw.

Hardly knowing what he did, Daniel started away from her, and whisking round charged through the bridal party, down the nave, thrust aside the knot of gaping onlookers in the porch, descended the flight of steps apparently with one stride, and bounding over the lychgate fled into the fields on the opposite side of the road.

Phœbe, with a stifled shriek, hastened after him with all the speed that her distress of mind and amplitude of person would admit of, but was almost knocked over by her brother Dick, who had started in hot pursuit of the fugitive. Mary Ann, not to be outdone, gallopaded in the rear, and Mr. Cosser with muttered threats of vengeance hobbled in her wake at a considerable distance.

“Yoicks! Gone away!” shouted Abel Bolt, tumbling out of the church followed by Jarge and the whole of the idle crew who had brought about the catastrophe. In another minute, the whole party joined in the chase, and the church was left entirely deserted except for the astonished and scandalised Rector, his clerk and poor old Mrs. Cosser, who remained dissolved in tears in the front bench. Even Daniel’s own relations had joined in pursuit, his sister announcing breathlessly, as she hastened forth, that he must have gone out of his mind.

Meanwhile the fugitive, in spite of the tightness of his wedding boots and the stiffness of his new clothes, careered across country, with almost incredible speed. Now his blue-coated form might be seen leaping a hedge, now scudding over a stretch of pasture. Dick, the best man, was the nearest to him, family pride lending wings to his long legs, but even he was soon distanced, and by the time he had reached the second bank and forced his way through the thorns and briars which topped it, the runaway bridegroom was nowhere to be seen. Dick was at fault, and though when the rest of the pursuers came up they scoured the fields, and “drew” the thickets, and hunted up and down by the banks, and even searched the willow-bed by the river, no trace of the fugitive was to be found. Phœbe had come to a standstill in the midst of the third field, where her father presently joined her. They stood panting opposite each other for a moment or two, after which Phœbe, unfolding a lace-bordered handkerchief, wiped her brow; then restoring it to her pocket, she remarked in a tone of conviction:

“I d’ ’low he’ve a-changed his mind.”

“Looks like it,” returned her parent shortly. “Ye can have the law on him for this.”

“That wouldn’t be much comfort to I,” she retorted.

“What be goin’ to do then?”

“I d’ ’low I’ll go home-along,” said the forsaken bride with decision. “There bain’t no use in standin’ here for the folks to gawk at, an’ I mid just so well take up one o’ they fowls. I shouldn’t think any o’ Dan’l’s folks ’ud want to show their faces at our place.”

“I d’ ’low they won’t,” returned Mr. Cosser in a menacing tone, as though who should say, “they’d better not!”

“Let’s be steppin’ then,” said Phœbe. “You’d best look in at church and fetch mother. I’ll make haste home.”

“That there Dan’l o’ yourn be a reg’lar rascal!” shouted her father.

Phœbe, who had already proceeded some paces on her way, turned her head and called back over her shoulder: “I can’t say as how he’ve acted so very well!” Then she went on again.

When the baffled hunting party finally gave up the chase and returned to Cosser’s, partly with the hope of being commended for their zeal, which they felt must have atoned for all previous errors, partly to see how the forsaken bride bore herself, they found that damsel in her working dress, “salting down” a fine piece of beef.

“There’ll be a terr’ble lot o’ waste over this ’ere job,” she remarked, “but we must do our best to save all what we can.”

“We couldn’t find en nowheres, Phœbe,” cried Dick. “Abel here d’ say he’s very like drownded; serve en right if he be.”

Phœbe paused in her labours to cast a reflective glance at the horizon.

“I’ll go warrant he bain’t drownded,” she said. “He don’t want to marry I, that’s what ’tis. He wouldn’t ha’ married I a bit the more if you’d ha’ catched en.”

“But what’s the meanin’ of it,” thundered Mr. Cosser from his corner, “what’s the meanin’ on’t, I want to know. He did seem to know his own mind afore--very well he did.”

“I think he was gallied like,” said Phœbe. “E-es, I d’ ’low that’s what he wer’.”

Abel and Jarge began to edge away from the group, but Phœbe went on without seeming to notice them.

“When Parson did ax en the question straight-out like, I d’ ’low he felt ’fraid. That’s what ’twas, he was ’fraid.”

Withdrawing her gaze from the distant hills and heaving a gentle sigh she carried away her beef; and as there was no indication that any outsider was expected to join the family circle, or indeed to partake of any refreshment, the bystanders walked slowly away, and the Cosser family proceeded gloomily to divest themselves of their holiday clothes.

It was quite dark when Daniel rose from his cramped and exceedingly moist hiding-place in the sedges by the river, and slowly betook himself homewards. During the many hours he had lain cowering there, listening to the voices of his pursuers, he had had leisure to repent of and marvel at the senseless impulse which had brought him to his present plight.

“Well, I be a stunpoll!” he had said to himself over and over again. “I be a dalled stunpoll! What the mischief did I do it for? Whatever will the poor maid think of I? She’ll never look at I again--she’ll never take the leastest notice of me.”

More than once he had been half-inclined to rush out of his lair and give himself up to justice, but how could he face that grinning multitude? If they had made fun of him before, what would they do now? Besides her family were furious, and the rustic mind loves justice of a certain rough kind. Daniel was not more of a coward than another, but he had a wholesome dread of broken bones. No, he dursn’t show his face for a long time, that was certain; and as for ever making up with Phœbe again, it was out of the question--no woman could forgive such treatment.

Very disconsolately, indeed, did Daniel turn in at his own little gate; even in the dusk he could see how nice the place looked, how complete were his arrangements. He opened the door and slunk in, dropping into the nearest chair with a groan. After quite a long time he made up his mind to strike a match and look round, though he knew the sight of the cosy little room would increase his melancholy. He lit the blue glass lamp which had been placed in readiness on the dresser, and with a heavy sigh poked up the fire which had been carefully “kept in” with a thick layer of wet slack. The light leaped on the newly-papered walls with their neat design of blue roses on a buff ground--he had papered these walls himself, in honour of the coming event--on the two elbow-chairs, just re-covered with a gay chintz. On the table in the centre was a small tray with a biblical design in prodigiously bright colours, which bore a curious old decanter containing elderberry wine, a plate of mixed biscuits and two tumblers. In setting these forth that morning he had thought with tender glee of how Phœbe’s first wifely task would be to “hot-up” some of that wine in one of her new saucepans. Had it not been for his own inconceivable folly, they might at that very moment have been sitting face to face drinking each other’s health. And now! Daniel dropped his face in his hands and fairly sobbed.

One day about a fortnight after the untoward event which had so rudely quenched her simple hopes, Phœbe Cosser was standing by the wash-tub up to her eyes in suds, with Mary Ann similarly engaged; while Mrs. Cosser in the inner room laboriously ironed out a few of the fine things which had already passed through her daughter’s hands. All at once, Mary Ann, raising her eyes, uttered a little scream which immediately lost itself in a fit of giggles.

“There! I never did see such a foolish maid!” commented Phœbe severely. “Whatever be gawkin’ at?”

“Lard! There now! Well, to be sure!” ejaculated Mary Ann between spasmodic titters. “Look yonder behind the thorn tree!”

The Cossers’ garden sloped downwards towards the road, and a gnarled May tree filled the angle where the front hedge joined that which separated their piece of ground from their neighbour’s; the twisted trunk was split down to a few feet from the ground, and through this aperture Daniel Chaffey’s woeful face was peering. As Phœbe turned towards him he immediately dived out of sight. After waiting a moment and finding he did not reappear Phœbe philosophically went on with her washing. In a few minutes, however, Mary Ann began to giggle afresh. Phœbe whisked round so sharply that she caught a glimpse of her former lover’s vanishing face.

“Don’t take no notice,” she said sternly, implanting a vicious nudge in her cousin’s ribs; after which she shifted her position so as to turn her back to the thorn.

After another short interval, however, the sound of her own name breathed in the most dolorous of tones caused her to turn her head once more. Daniel had thrown an arm round each half of the trunk, and was craning forth through the gap, his face vying in colour with the clusters of haws which surrounded it.

“Phœbe!” he pleaded with a gusty sigh.

“Well?” returned she, slowly wiping the suds from her stout red arms.

“Phœbe, I’ve acted terr’ble bad to ye.”

“E-es, you have,” replied Phœbe succinctly.

“I d’ ’low I have,” he agreed dejectedly. “I be pure sorry, dalled if I bain’t.”

Miss Cosser snorted.

“I’ve a-repented, my dear, ever since. E-es, I have! Sure I have! Phœbe!”

“Well?”

“I’ve a-been thinkin’--would ye go to church wi’ me now?”

“This minute?” queried Phœbe with alacrity; the muscles of her face relaxed, and she twitched down first one of her rolled-up sleeves and then the other.

“E-es, this very minute; the Reverend ’ull tie us up right enough if I ax en.”

“Gie me a clean apron!” cried Phœbe, turning quickly to Mary Ann and jerking at the string of the very damp garment which protected her dress.

She already wore her hat, and by the time her cousin, who had vanished with a bound, reappeared shaking out the crisp folds of the clean white apron, she had unpinned her skirt.

“Now, then,” she remarked after tying it on, and she fixed her best eye with a business-like air on her Daniel, who had been gazing at her with almost incredulous rapture. He left off embracing the hawthorn and reached the garden gate at the same moment as Phœbe herself; and before Mrs. Cosser, attracted by Mary Ann’s shrieks of enjoyment, had had time to reach the door they had set off arm-in-crook and disappeared round the angle of the lane.

“A TERR’BLE VOOLISH LITTLE MAID.”

The cottage next door to Mrs. Cross had long been occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Frizzel, but when that good couple went to live “Darchester-side” near their married daughter Susan, their discarded dwelling was taken by a respectable widow woman named Chaffey; and on a certain autumn morning she entered into possession.

From under the green “shed” of his cart the carrier extracted a variety of goods and chattels, exciting keen interest in the mind of Mrs. Cross, who, with her nose flattened against the leaded panes of her bedroom window, watched the proceedings closely. The large articles of furniture had arrived on the previous day in a waggon--a wooden bedstead, so solid in construction and uncompromising in shape that its legs had hung over the edge; an oak settle and carved linen chest at which Mrs. Cross had turned up her nose, deeming them “terr’ble old-fayshioned”.

She was better pleased with the parlour suite of painted wood cushioned with brightly coloured cretonne--couch, armchair and three small chairs; the lot must have cost at least three pound ten, thought Mrs. Cross, for she had seen the like in the upholsterer’s window at Branston. Her respect for the newcomer immediately increased, and this morning as she squinted down at her from her attic, vainly endeavouring to see all round her at once, she was much impressed by her appearance.

Mrs. Chaffey was a spare woman of middle height, wearing a decent brown stuff gown and grey fringed shawl. Her black bonnet with its yellow flowers was quite “fayshionable” in shape, and though her black kid gloves were unbuttoned and had moreover grown somewhat grey about the finger-tips, they nevertheless conveyed the idea of exceeding respectability.

“Quite a genteel sort o’ body,” commented Mrs. Cross, “and do seem to know what she be about too,” she added a moment later, as Mrs. Chaffey, having entered the house presently emerged again, having changed her headgear for a gathered print sun-bonnet, and protected her dress by the addition of a large white apron.

Mrs. Cross screwed her head in the other angle of the window and again squinted down.

“That’s a feather bed,” she observed as a large tied-up bundle was placed in the expectant arms of the newcomer who clearly staggered beneath its weight; “carrier did ought to carry it for she. Pillows next! And a basket--chaney most like. Fender--fire-irons--kettle--pots and a pan or two--very small ’uns they be. ’Tis but a lone ’ooman they d’ say, she’ll not want so much cookin’--clock--hassock----”

The carrier’s voice now interrupted the inventory: “This ’ere basket, mum--that do make the lot. I hope ye’ll find all reg’lar, mum, and no damage done.”

Mrs. Cross, who had been breathing hard in her excitement, was at this point constrained to polish the window with her apron; by the time the operation was concluded and her nose again applied, Mrs. Chaffey had taken out her purse and was slowly counting out a certain number of coins into the carrier’s hand. Mrs. Cross could not for the life of her see how many, but she observed that the man’s face lengthened.

“Bain’t there nothin’ for luck?” he inquired. “I did take a deal o’ trouble wi’ they arnaments and sich-like.”

“You’ve a-had what I did agree for,” responded Mrs. Chaffey with dignity; her voice was high and clear, and as she spoke she turned towards the cottage with a final air.

“I d’ ’low she’s a bit near,” remarked Mrs. Cross as she retired from the window, rubbing her nose pensively. “Poor Martha Frizzel! She was a good soul, she _was_! Just about!”

She stood a moment looking round the little attic chamber, but without seeing either the somewhat untidy bed with its soiled patchwork quilt, or the washstand with its cracked jug, or the torn curtain pinned half-across the window; she saw instead her neighbour’s shrewd, kindly face bending over a pot of well-stewed tea, or nodding briefly in response to sundry requests for the use of a bucket, or the loan of a pan, and sometimes a few “spuds”.

“Mind you do bring ’em back,” was all Mrs. Frizzel would say. Well, sometimes Mrs. Cross did bring them back, and sometimes Martha came and fetched ’em, but she never made a bit of fuss, and was always as kind and neighbourly as she could be.

Mrs. Chaffey must be getting a bit settled by this time, Mrs. Cross thought, and resolved to pop in and ask how she was getting on. She smoothed her rough hair with the palms of her hands, jerked down her sleeves, which she usually wore rolled up till dinner-time, not because she fatigued herself with over-much work, but because it seemed somehow the proper thing to do of a morning; she twitched her apron straight, pinned over a gap in her bodice--Mrs. Cross was a great believer in the efficacy of pins, and rarely demeaned herself by using a needle and thread--and finally composing her features to an expression of polite and sympathetic interest, strolled leisurely downstairs and into her neighbour’s premises.

Mrs. Chaffey was standing by her table, busily unpacking china, but when the other entered remarking genially that she thought she’d just look in to see how Mrs. Chaffey liked her noo place, and if she could lend a hand anywheres, she came forward with a somewhat frosty smile and set a chair.

“Sit down, won’t ye?” she said. “I’m a bit busy, but there! it do do folks good to set a bit now and then.”

“E-es, indeed, my dear,” responded Mrs. Cross enthusiastically; it was a sentiment she cordially endorsed. “Lard! if a body was to keep upon their legs from morn till night, churchyard ’ud be fuller at the year’s end nor it needs to be. I be pure glad you’ve a-took this ’ere house,” she added graciously, “’tis what I scarce expected as any respectable party ’ud come to it. The chimbley smokes,” said Mrs. Cross delightedly; “there, ’tis summat awful how it do smoke! And in the bedroom the rain and wind do fair beat in when a bit of a storm do come--’tis these ’ere queer little vooty winder-panes--rain comes through them so easy as anything. And the damp! there, Mrs. Frizzel, what lived here last, used to say many a time: ‘Mrs. Cross, my dear,’ she did use to say, ‘the damp do seem to creep into my very bwones’. But I be pure glad to see you here, I’m sure,” she summed up cheerfully, “and ’tis to be hoped as you’ll find it comfortable.”

Mrs. Chaffey’s face, always somewhat plaintive in expression, had become more and more dismal as her neighbour proceeded, and she now heaved a deep sigh.

“I d’ ’low ’twill do for I,” she said gloomily; “I be a lone ’ooman, Mrs. ----?”

She paused tentatively.

“Mrs. Cross be my name, my dear. E-es--Maria Cross. E-es, that be my name, my dear.”

“Well, Mrs. Cross,” resumed the newcomer, taking up her discourse in a voice tuned to just the same note of melancholy patience as before, “well, Mrs. Cross, as I was a-sayin’, I be a lone ’ooman, a widow ’ooman, and I d’ ’low I must look to be put upon. I bain’t surprised to hear o’ the house bein’ damp and the chimbley smokin’--’tis jest what I mid have expected; and so I’ll tell the agent when I do go for to pay my rent.”

“It did ought to be considered in the rent,” suggested Mrs. Cross.

“It did,” agreed Mrs. Chaffey, and for a moment her eyes assumed an uncommonly wide-awake expression. “I’ll mention it to the gentleman, but I don’t look for much satisfaction--I don’t indeed, Mrs. Cross. A few shillin’s back maybe, and a new chimbley-pot, and toils put right on the roof, and a bit o’ lead paper maybe at back o’ my bed--no more nor that, Mrs. Cross--they’ll not do more than that for a lone ’ooman.”

“And didn’t ye never ha’ no childern?” inquired Mrs. Cross, with her head on one side; “it do seem molloncholy for ye to be left wi’out nobody to do a hand’s turn for ’ee, poor soul.”

Mrs. Chaffey shook her head with a portentous expression.

“A-h-h-h, Mrs. Cross, my dear,” she said, “if there was sich a thing as a bit o’ gratitood in this world, I wouldn’t be left wi’out a creature to do for me at my time o’ life. Childern of my own I have not,” said Mrs. Chaffey, with an air which indicated that the fact was very much to her credit, “but there’s them livin’ now as I’ve been more than a mother to, what have gone and left I in my ancient years--as thankless.”

“Lard, now!” ejaculated her neighbour, much interested; “ye don’t tell I so, Mrs. Chaffey. Somebody what you’ve a-been very good to, I suppose, mum?”

“Good!” echoed Mrs. Chaffey. “Good’s not the word for it, Mrs. Cross. ’Twas my first cousin’s child--a poor little penniless maid what was brought up in a institootion--an orphan, my dear, as hadn’t nobody in the world to look to. Well, when her time was up at the institootion, I come for’ard, and I says, ‘I’ll take her,’ I says; ‘she don’t need to go to service,’ I says. ‘I’m her mother’s cousin,’ I told ’em, ‘and she can come to live wi’ I.’”

“And they were delighted of course,” suggested Mrs. Cross, as she paused impressively.

“No; if you’ll believe me, they fair dathered I wi’ axin’ questions, and wantin’ I to make promises and that. ‘Why didn’t I come and see the maid afore?’ says they, as if ’twas likely, Mrs. Cross, as I’d go trapesin’ off to a institootion to ax arter a maid as was too small to be any good to anybody. Then they did want I to give her wages. Wages to a little bit of a thing as knowed nothin’, and couldn’t do nothin’! ‘No,’ I says, ‘I’ll give her a home,’ I says, ‘and I’ll be a mother to her, and train her same as if she was my own child, but more than that I will _not_ do.’”

“O’ course not,” agreed Mrs. Cross; “lucky enough she was to get sich a good offer, _I_ think.”

“And so you may,” agreed the other solemnly, “and so I did often say to the maid herself. ‘You may think yourself lucky,’ I did say to her often and often; ‘many another,’ I did tell her, ‘’ud put you out on the road when you do behave so voolish. But me! look at the patience I’ve had wi’ you!’ ’Twas a terr’ble voolish maid, Mrs. Cross--she was a bit silly in herself to begin with, and they institootions--Lard, they do never seem to teach a maid a thing as ’ull be a bit o’ use to ’em! She could scrub a stone passage a mile long if she was put to it, but there bain’t no passages in cottages, and she couldn’t so much as peel a potato or wash a cabbage. Well, I did take so much pains wi’ her as a mother could ha’ done--I did make her find out for herself how to hold a knife, no matter how much she did cut herself. ‘Find out,’ I did say; and she _did_ find out. And when grubs come up on the dish wi’ the cabbages, I’d cut off the bits as was nearest to ’em and put ’em on her plate; so she did soon learn, ye see. Sleep! that maid ’ud sleep many an’ many a cold morning arter I’d pulled blankets off her--e-es, there she’d lay so fast as anything, and never take a bit o’ notice till I got a drap o’ cold water--an that didn’t always wake her up all to once. There, she was fair aggravatin’!--when I did get her up at last and get back to bed again, I couldn’t get a wink o’ sleep for thinkin’ on’t.”

“Dear, to be sure! Well now!” commented Mrs. Cross, scratching her elbows appreciatively.

“E-es, indeed,” continued Mrs. Chaffey, warming with her theme. “I did tell her many a time, ‘You’ll come to no good’. Ah, that I did, and she didn’t come to no good neither.”

“Didn’t she though?” queried the other with interest. “Took up with a soldier, very like?”

“Nothin’ o’ the kind. There weren’t no soldiers anywheres near us. ’Twas another kind of a man altogether.”

“A-h-h,” groaned Mrs. Cross sympathetically. “And I s’pose he wouldn’t marry her, mum?”

“E-es, he married her, Mrs. Cross,” responded the widow in a tone of dignified surprise. “E-es, he married her. Indeed he did.”

“But there was carryin’s on, I s’pose?” suggested Mrs. Cross respectfully.

Mrs. Chaffey fixed her with a stony stare.

“I’m not one as ’ud allow no carryin’s on,” she returned loftily. “When the man come and axed Jenny--that was her name--I says to her, ‘Not with my consent,’ I says--well, she took and got married wi’out it.”

“Lard ha’ mercy me,” ejaculated the listener, seeing that she was expected to say something, “well, that was----” she hesitated, “I s’pose the man wasn’t one as you’d ha’ picked for her, Mrs. Chaffey? Maybe,” she added darkly, “he wasn’t in work?”

“He was in work,” replied Mrs. Chaffey solemnly, “reg’lar. Oh, e-es, he was in _work_.”

Mrs. Cross was a good deal mystified, and being too uncertain of her ground to venture on a comment, contented herself with clicking her tongue and turning up her eyes.

“’Tis a queer tale; ’tis indeed,” resumed the widow; “but as I did often say to she arter the job was done: ‘Don’t blame me, Jenny--what you did do, you did do wi’ your eyes open. I’ve a-told you plain,’ I says, ‘I’ve gied ye the best advice. Stay,’ I says, ‘where you’re well off. You’ve a-got a good home,’ I did tell her, ‘and one what is a mother to ye--don’t ye go for to take up with this ’ere stranger.’”

“Ah,” interrupted Mrs. Cross, beginning to think she at last saw daylight, “he was a stranger, was he?”

“He was a man what come to the door,” returned the other impressively, “what come to the door like any tramp. I did take en to be a tramp first off.”

“Oh, and he wasn’t a tramp then?” put in her neighbour, slightly disappointed.

“He _mid_ ha’ been one,” resumed the narrator, with a dignified wave of the hand intended to discourage further unnecessary and frivolous questions. “I’m willing to tell ’ee about it, Mrs. Cross, if you be willing to listen. ’Twas a Sunday of all days. We’d a’ been pretty busy till dinner-time. I’d got Jenny up soon arter four to get through wi’ cleanin’ up--I’m always one what likes to have the place reg’lar perfect, ye know--and by the time I come down for breakfast she’d a’ got everything straight. Well, her an’ me fell out--she did want if ye please to go to church wi’ I--so I says to her, ‘Who’s to get dinner then? Be I to wait on you?’ says I. ‘No,’ I says, ‘you stay at home and do your dooty, and you can go to the childern’s service in the afternoon if you behave well,’ says I. Well, but she wouldn’t hear reason; I did leave her cryin’ like a baby.

“I were a bit late comin’ back--chattin’ to this one and that one, an’ when I got in, what did I see but a strange man by the fire. Ye could ha’ knocked I down wi’ a feather. I did jist drap in the first chair I come to and p’int that way wi’ my finger--I couldn’t get out a word.