“Well, what followed?”
“Nothing, Madam. He wanted the horses to go on, and they stood stock still. The dogs just looked up at him, as if they thought he hed lost his senses. And Britton, he said then and there, ‘the Quality can hev all my share of grammar, and they are varry welcome to it.’ Our folk, young and old, learn greedily to read. Writing hes equal favor with them, arithmatic goes varry well with their natural senses, but grammar! What’s the use of grammar? They talk better when they know nothing about it.”
So it must be confessed, Miss Josepha did not meet with the eager gratitude she expected. She was indeed sometimes tempted to give up her plans, but to give up was to Josepha so difficult and so hateful that she would not give the thought a moment’s consideration. “I hev been taking the wrong way about the thing,” she said to Annie. “I will go and talk to them, mysen.”
“Then you will make them delighted to do all your will. Put on your bib and tucker, and ask Mr. Foster’s permission to use the meeting room of the Methodist Chapel. That will give your plans the sacred touch women approve when the subject concerns themselves.” This advice was followed, and two days afterward, Josepha dressed herself for a chapel interview with the mothers of Annis. The special invitation pleased them, and they went to the tryst with their usual up-head carriage, and free and easy manner, decidely accentuated.
Josepha was promptly at the rendezvous appointed, and precisely as the clock struck three, she stepped from the vestry door to the little platform used by the officials of the church in all their secular meetings. She smiled and bowed her head and then cried—“Mothers of Annis, good afternoon to every one of you!” And they rose in a body, and made her a courtesy, and then softly clapped their hands, and as soon as there was silence, Jonathan Hartley’s daughter welcomed her. There was nothing wanting in this welcome, it was brimful of honest pleasure. Josepha was Annis. She was the sister of their squire, she was a very handsome woman, and she had thought it worth while to dress herself handsomely to meet them. She was known to every woman in the village, but she had never become commonplace or indifferent. There was no other woman just like her in their vicinity, and she had always been a ready helper in all the times of their want and trouble.
As she stood up before them, she drew every eye to her. She wore or this occasion, her very handsomest, deepest, mourning garments. Her long nun-like crêpe veil would have fallen below her knees had it not been thrown backward, and within her bonnet there was a Maria Stuart border of the richest white crêpe. Her thick wavy hair was untouched by Time, and her stately figure, richly clothed in long garments of silk poplin, was improved, and not injured, by a slight embonpoint that gave her a look of stability and strength. Her face, both handsome and benign, had a rather austere expression, natural and approved,-though none in that audience understood that it was the result of a strong will, tenaciously living out its most difficult designs.
Without a moment’s delay she went straight to her point, and with vigorous Yorkshire idioms soon carried every woman in the place with her; and she knew so well the mental temperature of her audience, that she promptly declined their vote. “I shall take your word, women,” she said in a confident tone, “and I shall expect ivery one of you to keep it.”
Amid loud and happy exclamations, she left the chapel and when she reached the street, saw that her coachman was slowly walking the ponies in an opposite direction, in order to soothe their restlessness. She also was too restless to stand still and wait their leisurely pace and she walked in the same direction, knowing that they must very soon meet each other. Almost immediately someone passed her, then turned back and met face to face.
It was a handsome man of about the squire’s age, and he put out his hand, and said with a charming, kindly manner:—
“Why-a, Josepha! Josepha! At last we hev met again.”