‘Not often. My duties take up so much of my time. But sometimes I have an hour to spare in the evening, and I shouldn’t like to let our friendship drop now it has been renewed. Are you fond of reading?’
‘It depends on what I have to read. I’m not over fond of sermons, such as you used to give me in the old days, Hugh.’
The young man coloured.
‘Used I to give you sermons? It must have been very presumptuous of me. I will promise to give you no more—at least in private. But I have a very fair library of books, and they are all at your service if you should require them.’
‘Thank you. I will tell you if I should want something to amuse me, but for the present I shall be too busy helping mother, and getting my hand in for dairy and laundry work.’
‘You will never come back to that now. You have grown above it,’ replied the young man, gazing admiringly at her smooth, pallid complexion and white hands.
‘What do you know about it?’ said Nell curtly. ‘Don’t bet against me, Hugh, or you’ll lose your money. Good-night. Mother says you preach out in the fields, and some day I’ll come with her to hear you, just for old times’ sake. But if you are very prosy I shall walk straight home again, so I give you fair warning.’
‘Only tell me when you’re coming, and I’ll not be prosy,’ cried Hugh eagerly.
The rest of the party had put on their wraps by this time, and were prepared to start. Hetty wound her arm around her sister’s waist, and they walked together up the steep incline to the wide, white gate, where the Dale Farm people joined forces and set out for home. Nell stood in the moonlight, gazing after them till they had disappeared round the turning of the road, and then retraced her footsteps. As she found herself alone in the white moonlight, with only the solitude and the silence, all the forced gaiety she had maintained throughout the evening deserted her, and she staggered and caught at the slender trunk of an apple tree to prevent herself from falling, ‘Oh, my God, my God,’ she prayed, ‘how shall I bear it?’
Her eyes were strained to the starry sky; her face looked ghastly in the moonlight; her frame trembled as if she could not support herself. She might have remained thus for an indefinite time had she not been roused by the sound of her mother’s voice calling her from the farm-house door.