“She’s getting very old,” said Pamela. “I caught her nodding yesterday with the Blessing on her lap, and he as near as anything into the cinders. Besides, my mind’s made up, and there’s no use your trying to unmake it. I’ve my reasons, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Why, Pam, why, lovey”—Mrs. Pounce had a grimace like an infant about to cry—“you fair break my heart. Why, ’twas all my thought, these days and days, how I’d let neighbours see what a beauty my dear, good London da’ter be, and as elegant as any lady!”
“If you’ve got a reason for disappointing your mother, out with it, girl, so it’s a good ’un,” said Farmer Pounce, with some sternness.
Pamela tossed her head. She was never one for making mysteries.
“Well, father and mother, if you must know so particular, wasn’t that Sir Jasper Standish as was driving the high curricle away from Pitfold Church this morning? The stout gentleman, with the kind of red eye, and it rolling?”
“Aye, aye,” grumbled the farmer, “the very man, my dear, and a hard gentleman he be. And queer tales there are about him. ’Tis a good thing he comes to Standish Hall but seldom. Aye, aye, ’twas him driving them bloods in the curricle. And a mort of fine ladies and gentlemen in the barouche. They’ll be staying Christmas, I reckon.”
“Aye,” corroborated Mrs. Pounce. “A twenty-pound jar of my best salt, and six turkeys, no less, not to speak of the geese—aye, and a ham, cured in that very chamber in the chimbley, child. But, dear, to be sure, was you set against meeting Sir Jasper just for the seeing of him step into his curricle?”
“You didn’t happen to note, mother, the gentleman who stepped in after him?”
Farmer Pounce and his wife exchanged a scared look, and then by common consent transferred it to their daughter. There was silence, broken only by the cheerful song of the kettle on its chain over the embers, and the stertorous breathing of the infant farmer in the cot.
Then, with a catch in her breath: