“Oh, Dorothy, how can you say such things!” and Lucy looked really shocked.
“But you, Lucy, you are altered too. Ah! How my tongue runs on. But there, it is such a relief to let it run just once in a way, for at school, it’s ‘Miss Tinker, give silence, if you please,’ and ‘Miss Tinker, less noise.’ and ‘Miss Tinker, cease laughing,’ till I’m Miss Tinkered to death, and you know what it is at home. I vow if it weren’t for old Betty and Irish Peggy, I’d soon be competent to conduct a school for the deaf and dumb. Yes, Lucy, you are altered too; you’re stouter and rosier, altogether happier looking, what’s come over the child, Hannah!”
“Ah! that’s all Tom’s doing,” said Hannah, “and God’s, mother dear,” softly added Lucy.
“Tom?” queried Dorothy, “who in the name of goodness is Tom?”
“Why, Tom,—oh, Tom is just Tom,” said Lucy, “you can’t have forgotten him, Miss Dorothy, you must remember to have seen him.”
“Not a remembrance!” exclaimed Dorothy emphatically; “but it’s an ugly name enough. Tom what? or maybe it’s the cat.”
“Ah! now aw see you’re only playing, miss,” said Hannah. “Noah, sen yo’? why, wheerivver han’ yo’r e’en bin not to see yar Tom, Tom Pinder, yo’ know—he’s warked for yo’r uncle these how mony years is’t, Lucy, lemme see, aye these five year an’ more, an’ if yo’ hannot seen him I’se warrant yo’re th’ only wench i’ Holmfirth ’at ha not.
“But what’s this Admirable Crichton to do with Lucy’s better looks?”
“Why, ivverything, if truth be spokken, as ever it shall be i’ this haase whiles Hannah Garsed has a tongue to speik. Yo’ mind what a pale peaky helpless critter ’oo wor five yer back, none fit to do a hand-stir for hersen. That wer’ after ’oo’d worked ’at yor’ uncle’s for a spell—but that’s nother here nor theer. An’ then, who but yo’r own sen up an’ spak’ to yo’r uncle ’at aw could, mebbe do wi’ a lodger, an’ didn’t he come—yo’r uncle, aw meean—an’ ’gree wi’ me to tak’ Tom an’ do for ’im, an’ he—yo’r uncle aw meean—wer’ to pay me hauf-a-craan a week for him, at first, an’ rise to four shillin’ afore Tom wer’ out o’ his writin’s, which awm sure it’s little enough when th’ weshin’s considered, an’ ’im that hearty yo’d think sometimes he’d eit a man off his horse, not but what he’s welcome to all he can howd an’ more till it, for aw couldn’t think more on ’im nor do more for ’im, if he wer’ my own lad, which aw sometimes awmost think he is, an’ yar Ben that set up wi’ ’im, an’ ’im so clivver at his books ’at it’s as gooid as a sermon an’ better nor some to yer th’ father an’ ’im a argeyfyin’ an’ a argeyfyin’ till yo’d think they’d nivver ha’ done.”
“But what about Lucy?”