During Patty’s absence John Ashbrook had paid frequent visits to her father.
After her return he did not seem disposed to leave at all.
“Dall it! but John ’ud mek her a good husband,” muttered the farmer. “The Jamblins and Ashbrooks wer med to run in pairs. Patty and John ’ill go together as nat’ral as half-and-half.”
As these were his sentiments he gave the young people every opportunity of sweethearting, as he termed it.
And he was perpetually finding excuses for putting on his thick boots to go into the yard.
Jamblin was known to be a rich man. His father had left him a good sum at his death, to which he had been adding for years.
The only wonder was that his daughter had not a host of candidates for her hand.
By-and-bye it came to be rumoured among the old women who gossipped over their brown sugar and tea, and among the farmers and dealers on “’Change” on market day, and among the servants in their Sunday strolls, that John Ashbrook, of Oakfield House, was keeping company with Miss Jamblin, of Stoke Ferry.
As soon as this fact was established Stoke Ferry became the focus of twenty radiating hearts. Then intelligent agriculturists could only discover that Patty Jamblin was a catch both for wealth and beauty by the time that a good-looking and (for a farmer) a passably talkative young man had got a footing ahead of them.
But this, doubtless, most of my readers may have observed is often the case. On Sunday evenings Stoke Ferry was like a fair, and the consumption of spirits and tobacco would have shed honour upon an assemblage of medical students; but even gin and water did not embolden these visitors to make more than sheep’s eyes at the fairy who had drawn them there.