‘Well, father, you wouldn’t be the one to blame her for that, surely?’
‘Not I, if she’d done it in a decent way. Haven’t I asked her a dozen times since she left us to come home if she felt inclined? But big situations ain’t thrown up in that way, Mary. Servants have to give a month’s notice before they leave. Has she left Lord Ilfracombe’s service before he has got someone to fill her place? There’s something I don’t understand about it all, and I wish Nell had come back in a more regular manner. Where’s her boxes and things? Has she left them in London, or brought them with her? And if so, why didn’t she bring them on in Johnson’s fly, or ask me to send Bob with the cart to fetch them?’
At this query Mrs Llewellyn almost began to cry.
‘Oh, Griffith, my man, you mustn’t be hard on the lass, but she hasn’t got anything with her. No box, nor nothing—only the clothes she stands upright in. She has just told me so.’
‘What, from a situation like Lord Ilfracombe’s!’ exclaimed the farmer. ‘What has she done with them then? There’s some mystery about all this that I don’t like, Mary, and I mean to get to the bottom of it.’
‘There’s no mystery, Griffith, only a misfortune. Nell has told me all about it. I think she must have spent more than she could afford—perhaps on her sister when she was in London—any way our Nell got in debt, and sold her things to pay it. It was very unfortunate, but it was honourable, you see. And she is but a girl after all. We mustn’t judge her too hardly. She didn’t know how much she owed perhaps, or she thought she’d make it up from her wages, and then this marriage took place, and she left and found herself in a fix. It seems very plain to me.’
‘But why should she leave when his lordship got married? He’ll want a housekeeper just the same. And likely would have raised Nell’s wages. It was the very time for her to stay on.’
‘Ah, well, father, she longed to see us all again. You heard the dear lass say so, and you’d be the last to blame her for that, I’m sure.’
‘Of course,’ replied her husband, ‘no one is better pleased to have the girl back than I am, but I wish it had been all straight and above board, and with no mystery about it. For I’d lay my life you haven’t got at the bottom of it yet, wife, nor ever will if the jade don’t mean you to. You don’t know the tricks they learns them up in London. Well, now she’s come back, she stays. I won’t have no more London, and no more mysteries. She’s welcome back as the flowers in May, but I wish she’d told the whole truth about it.’