So Letty went, but it was against her will, though she couldn’t have told you why, for the miller was a likely man for a husband, seeing that he was as handsome a fellow as any in the village, and had about the best prospects. She laughed and chatted and chaffed, however, as was her wont, and how was the postman to know, when they met him presently going soberly to evening church with his old mother, that she was not quite so merry for the rest of the way, and went home quite half-an-hour earlier than she had intended?
But that might have been because the rain came down as she had prophesied, and she had supper to get at home, and could not risk being late by staying at the mill till the storm was over, as the miller’s mother had begged her to do.
Nevertheless her skirt was drenched when she got to the top of the hill. Perhaps it was a fellow feeling in the matter of having one’s Sunday best spoilt that made her take her courage in both hands and accost the postman when she met him again, just at her own door, walking without any protection against the weather in his black broad-cloth and tall hat.
“Won’t ye take the loan o’ my umbrella, Mr. Frewin?” said she timidly. “It’s comin’ down wonderful hard.”
Ben Frewin stopped, and as luck would have it, looked at her.
Her eyes were wistful, and there was a bashful sort of appeal in them that he had never seen there before. He could not account for it, but she might have done so; that is to say, she might have done so if she had been in the habit of analyzing her feelings. As it was, she did not know that shame for what she had undertaken was at the bottom of the sudden fit of apologetic coyness that made her so doubly and unconsciously fascinating.
From any one else, and still more from her at any other moment, Frewin would curtly have refused the offered civility. But she looked so timid and so anxious, standing there in the rain with her skirts gathered round her, and the umbrella half held out towards him, that he hadn’t the courage to snub her.
“Well, it’s real kind of you,” said he. “But ye’ll have to run indoors first, or ye’ll spoil yer pretty ’at.”
She turned and tripped up the path, and he must needs of course follow, the gate slamming to behind him. At the porch she closed the umbrella and held it out to him, but a voice from within called out authoritatively:
“Whatever don’t ye ask Mr. Frewin to step indoors for, Letty? Ye’ll both get wet to the skin out there.”