"Mattie's one."
"Yes—Mattie's one!" he repeated.
"I've often wondered and a-wondered what would make her happy; do you know, sir, sometimes I think that—that you might, if you'll excuse an ignorant woman saying so."
"That I might!—what has made you think that? Sit down—why don't you sit down!"
"Well, just to talk this over, and for my darling's sake, I will for once demean myself;" and Ann Packet, red in the face with excitement, seated herself on the verge of the horsehair chair.
Ann Packet had broken through the ice at last; it had been a trouble of long duration; she who knew Mattie's secret, guessed where Mattie's chance of happiness rested, she thought. But it is delicate work to strive for the happiness of other people, and leads to woful failures, as a rule.
Ann Packet was nervous; the plunge had been made, and the truth must escape—she dashed into the subject, for "her gal's sake."
"Lookee here, sir—it's no good my keeping back my 'pinion, that our Mattie is really fond of you! When she was a girl in Suffolk Street, and you a bit of a boy, she used to worry me about you, and yet I never guessed it! When she growed bigger and you growed bigger, she showed her liking less, but it peeped out at times unbeknown to herself, and yet I never guessed it! But when she was ill in Tenchester Street, and I left here to nus her, the truth came on me all of a heap, and mazed me drefful!"
"What made you think of this—this nonsense, then?" he asked.
"She spoke about you in her fever, when her head was gone," said Ann; "of how your happiness hadn't come, and yet she'd worked so hard for it. And somehow I guessed it then—and when she came here, and was, for the fust time, happy in her way—I knowed it!"