When Jenny said she must go and get ready for the theater, the farmer asked if he might put her along a bit of the way.
"If you like," she told him. "Only I hope you walk quicker than what you eat, because I shall be most shocking late if you don't."
Trewhella said he would walk just as quick as she'd a mind to; but Jenny insured herself against lateness by getting ready half an hour earlier than usual.
They presented a curious contrast, the two of them walking down Hagworth Street. There was a certain wildness in the autumnal evening that made Trewhella look less out of keeping with the city. All the chimneys were flying streamers of smoke. Heavy clouds, streaked with dull red veins, were moving down the sky, and the street corners looked very bare in the wind. Trewhella stalked on with his long, powerful body bent forward from crooked legs. His twisted stick struck the pavement at regular intervals: his Ascot tie of red satin gleamed in the last rays of the sunset. Beside him was Jenny, not much shorter actually, but seeming close to him very tiny indeed.
"Look, you maid," said Trewhella when, after a silent hundred yards, they were clear of the house, "I never seed no such a thing as your dancing before. I believe the devil has gotten hold of me at last. I sat up there almost falling down atop of 'ee? Yet I'm the man who's sat thinking of Heaven ever since I heard tell of it. Look, you maid, will you be marrying me this week and coming home along back to Cornwall?"
"What?" cried Jenny. "Marry you?"
"Now don't be in a frizz to say no all at once. But hark what I do tell 'ee. I've got a handsome lill farm set proper and lew— Bochyn we do call it. And I've got a pretty lill house all a-shining wi' brass and all a-nodding wi' roses and geraniums where a maid could sit looking out of the window like a dove if she'd a mind to, smelling the stocks and lilies in the garden and harking to the sea calling from the sands."
"Well, don't keep on so fast," Jenny interrupted. "You don't think I'd marry anyone I'd only just seen? And besides you don't hardly know me."
"But I do know you're the only maid for me, and I can't go back without you. That's where it's to. When I've been preaching and sweating away down to the chapel, when I've been shouting and roaring about the glories of Heaven, I've all the time been thinking of maids' lips and wondering how I didn't care to go courting. I'm going to have 'ee."
"Thanks," said Jenny loftily. "I seem to come on with the crowd in this scene. I don't want to marry you."