Margaret was surprised at this last question, for at Helstone it would have been an understood thing, after the enquiries she had made, that she intended to come and call upon any poor neighbour whose name and habitation she had asked for.
“I thought—I meant to come and see you.” She suddenly felt rather shy of offering the visit, without having any reason to give for her wish to make it, beyond a kindly interest in a stranger. It seemed all at once to take the shape of an impertinence on her part; she read this meaning too in the man’s eyes.
“I’m none so fond of having strange folk in my house.” But then relenting, as he saw her heightened colour, he added, “Yo’re a foreigner, as one may say, and maybe don’t know many folk here, and yo’ve given my wench here flowers out of yo’r own hand;—yo may come if yo like.”
Margaret was half amused, half-nettled at this answer. She was not sure if she would go where permission was given so like a favour conferred. But when they came to the turn into Frances Street, the girl stopped a minute, and said,
“Yo’ll not forget yo’re to come and see us.”
“Aye, aye,” said the father, impatiently, “hoo’ll come. Hoo’s a bit set up now, because hoo thinks I might ha’ spoken more civilly; but hoo’ll think better on it, and come. I can read her proud bonny face like a book. Come along, Bess; there’s the mill bell ringing.”
Margaret went home, wondering at her new friends, and smiling at the man’s insight into what had been passing in her mind. From that day Milton became a brighter place to her. It was not the long, bleak sunny days of spring, nor yet was it that time was reconciling her to the town of her habitation. It was that in it she had found a human interest.
CHAPTER IX.
DRESSING FOR TEA.
“Let China’s earth, enriched with coloured stains,
Pencil’d with gold, and streaked with azure veins,
The grateful flavour of the Indian leaf,
Or Mocha’s sunburnt berry glad receive.”
Mrs. Barbould.
The day after this meeting with Higgins and his daughter Mr. Hale came upstairs into the little drawing-room at an unusual hour. He went up to different objects in the room, as if examining them, but Margaret saw that it was merely a nervous trick—a way of putting off something he wished, yet feared to say. Out it came at last—