‘Hast told him so?’ she asked.
‘I have told him,’ Bertha answered, ‘never to speak to me again.’
‘Hoity, toity, deary me!’ cried the old woman. ‘And what says he to that?’
‘He didn’t greatly seem to care,’ said Bertha, with a beautifully assumed air of indifference.
‘Maybe he didn’t set such store by what you told him as to tek it in earnest?’
‘Oh,’ said the girl, languidly and indifferently, ‘he knew I meant it.’
‘And didn’t seem to care? My dear, you’re talkin’ of Lane Protheroe!’
‘He cared for a minute, perhaps,’ Bertha said, her assumed indifference and languor tinctured with bitterness by this time. ‘He cared for a minute, perhaps; just as he does about everything. I heard him whistling an hour afterwards.’
The disguise was excellent, and might have deceived a woman who had known her less intimately and watched her less closely, but it was transparent to the mother.
‘That’s the trouble, is it?’ said Mrs. Fellowes, gravely betaking herself once more to her knitting. Bertha had been crying already, and had hard work to restrain herself. ‘Look here, my darlin’,’ the mother said, with unwonted tenderness of tone and manner, ‘if you can’t read your own mind, you must let a old experienced woman read it for you. The lad’s as the Lord made him. What we see in any o’ the men to mek a fuss about, the Lord in His mercy only knows; but, to my mind, Lane’s ‘the pick o’ ten thousand. He’s alive, and that’s more than can be said of many on ‘em. He’s a clever lad, he’s well to look at, and he’s well-to-do.’