Her sisters came in bright and glowing.
"Oh, Jemima, how nice and cool you are, sitting in this shady room!" (She had felt it even chilly.) "We have been such a long walk! We are so tired. It is so hot."
"Why did you go, then?" said she.
"Oh! we wanted to go. We would not have stayed at home on any account. It has been so pleasant," said Mary.
"We've been to Scaurside Wood, to gather wild strawberries," said Elizabeth. "Such a quantity! We've left a whole basketful in the dairy. Mr Farquhar says he'll teach us how to dress them in the way he learnt in Germany, if we can get him some hock. Do you think papa will let us have some?"
"Was Mr Farquhar with you?" asked Jemima, a dull light coming into her eyes.
"Yes; we told him this morning that mamma wanted us to take some old linen to the lame man at Scaurside Farm, and that we meant to coax Mrs Denbigh to let us go into the wood and gather strawberries," said Elizabeth.
"I thought he would make some excuse and come," said the quick-witted Mary, as eager and thoughtless an observer of one love-affair as of another, and quite forgetting that, not many weeks ago, she had fancied an attachment between him and Jemima.
"Did you? I did not," replied Elizabeth. "At least I never thought about it. I was quite startled when I heard his horse's feet behind us on the road."
"He said he was going to the farm, and could take our basket. Was not it kind of him?" Jemima did not answer, so Mary continued: