CHAPTER XX. MISS FFRENCH MAKES A CALL.
The following Sunday morning, the congregation of Broxton Chapel was thrown into a state of repressed excitement. Haworth's carriage, with a couple of servants, brought his mother to enjoy Brother Hixon's eloquence. To the presence of the carriage and servants Haworth had held firm. Upon the whole, he would have preferred that she should have presented herself at the door of Broxton Old Church, which was under the patronage of the county families and honored by their presence; but the little woman had exhibited such uneasiness at the unfolding of his plan of securing the largest and handsomest pew for her that he had yielded the point.
"I've always been a chapel-goin' woman, Jem," she had said, "an' I wouldn't like to change. An' I should feel freer where there's not so many gentlefolk."
The carriage and the attending servants she had submitted to with simple obedience. There were no rented pews in Broxton Chapel, and she took her seat among the rest, innocently unconscious of the sensation her appearance created. Every matron of the place had had time to learn who she was, and to be filled with curiosity concerning her.
Janey Briarley, by whose side she chanced to sit, knew more than all the rest, and took her under her protection at once.
"Tha'st getten th' wrong hymn-book," she whispered audibly, having glanced at the volume the servant handed to her. "We dunnot use Wesley aw th' toime. We use Mester Hixon's 'Songs o' Grace.' Tha can look on wi' me."
Her delicate attentions and experience quite won Dame Haworth's motherly heart.
"I never see a sharper little thing," she said, admiringly, afterward, "nor a old-fashioneder. There wasn't a tex' as she didn't find immediate, nor yet a hymn."
"Bless us!" said Mrs. Briarley, laboriously lugging the baby homeward. "An' to think o' her bein' th' mistress o' that big house, wi' aw them chaps i' livery at her beck an' call. Why, she's nowt but a common body, Jane Ann. She thanked thee as simple as ony other woman mought ha' done! She's noan quality. She'd getten a silk gown on, but it wur a black un, an' not so mich as a feather i' her bonnet. I'd ha' had a feather, if I'd ha' been her—a feather sets a body off. But that's allus th' road wi' folk as has brass—they nivver know how to spend it."