“Then I’ll tell you, Dally. You are growing too light and free, and your conduct is far from becoming, or what it should be for a maid-servant at the Rectory. If girls are so foolish they must not be surprised at young men—gentlemen—taking such liberties. Now go. And mind this: if it ever occurs again, I shall acquaint my brother.”
“Well, I couldn’t help it, miss. I didn’t ask Mr Tom Candlish to kiss me.”
“Silence! How dare you? Leave the room.”
“I was a-going to, miss. He popped out from behind the hedge just as Billy Wilkins had given me the letters, and he says, ‘Give this note to Miss Leo, Dally,’ he says, ‘and mind no one else sees.’”
“I told you to leave the room, girl.”
“Well, miss, I’m a-going, ain’t I? And then, before I could help it, he put his arm round me and said my cheeks were like apples.”
“Will—you—leave—the—room?”
“Yes, miss, of course I will; and then he kissed me just as Billy Wilkins looked back, and now he’ll go and tell Joe Chegg, and he’ll scold me too. I’m a miserable girl.”
Red-cheeked, ruddy-lipped Dally Watlock—christened Delia as a compromise for Delilah—covered her round face with her apron, and began to sob and try to pump up a few tears to her bright dark eyes, as her young mistress seized her by the shoulders, and literally forced her out of the room, when Dally went sobbing down the passage and through the baize door before she dropped her apron and began to laugh.
“She’s as jealous as jel!” cried the girl. “It made her look quite yellow. Deal she’s got to talk about, too. Tell master! She daren’t! The minx! I could tell too. Who cares for her—tallow-face? Thinks she’s precious good-looking; but she ain’t everybody, after all. Master Joe Chegg, too, had better mind. I don’t care if he does know now.”