Ever your friend and sister.
MIRIAM.
I cannot tell you how long this letter took in the reading. You who read it in fair print, and straightforward, can have no notion. But we had to battle with Miriam’s handwriting, which, like all the women’s I’ve ever seen, was none of the easiest to make out; though, to be sure, since it was a man— old Daddy, you may remember—who had taught her her pothooks, she wrote a bolder hand than is usual with women folk, not all slopes and angles and flourishes. But Ruth’s reading of her much-prized letter was sorely interrupted by our comments as she read—Jim, I grieve to say, being the chief offender. When my sister came to that portion which told of the long glass that reflected Miriam’s face and form, Jim’s words there anent were like unto those of the comforters of Job:
“It’s all up wi’ thee, Abe lad, aw’m feart. It’s noan i’ reason ’at a lass ’ud gi’ up a looikin’ glass like yon just to wed a chap like thee. Aw’ll say nowt abaat th’ feather bed; oo med happen be got to swop it for a mattress stuffed wi’ straw, or belike shavin’s, which is th best Mickle Mill ’ll run to this mony a day to come, for aw’n noticed women set varry little store on makkin’ theirsen snug an’ comfortable wheer men come. But that glass ’ll cook thi bacon, Abe. Why, tha’s nobbut to watch a woman wi’ a bit o’ a glass noa bigger nor th’ palm o’ mi hand. Oo’ll twitch hersen, an’ twist hersen, aye, awmost stan’ on her yead, but some road or other oo’ll see th’ back o’ her yead an’ all ovver her, pertickler if oo’s getten a new bow or bonnet or strings to look at. Aw once seed a peacock i front o’ just sich another glass, an’ they towd me ’at when they tuk th’ glass away that bird fell off i’ its eatin’ and just pined away. An’ th’ rum part o’ th’ business is it isn’t their own bonny faces they want to look at, it’s their clo’es. Yo’ may be sewer ’at if Eve had onny clo’es to speik on i’ th’ Garden o’ Eden it isn’t a apple nor owt else to eit or sup other ’at Owd Harry ’ud ha’ tempted her wi’, but a looikin’ glass. But bein’ as oo were, poor thing, oo’d nowt but her own pratty face to speer at, an’ though that’s what a man vallys most i’ a woman, it’s just what she hersen sets least count on.”
“It seems to me, James Haigh,” said my sister in a very frosty tone, “that you’ve made a very minute study of women, and you’d best take yourself off to those you’ve learned such a character from.”
“Nay, nay,” protested Jim, hastily, “it’s nobbut what aw’n heard say. Aw know nowt.”
“The letter, the letter,” broke in my father, and Ruth looking but half convinced, resumed the reading.
“Meet her at the Church Inn!” cried my sister. “Aye, that I will, and I just wish it was to-morrow. Now mind you lads are at home and all washed and in your second best when we get to ‘Wrigley Mill.”
CHAPTER XII.
MISSING!