Ann Straggalls held her head a little higher as she went on up the street through the market-place. She felt that she was an ambassadress of no little importance, as she had been stopped twice on her way.
As luck had it, she came upon the Reverend Henry Lambent as he was leaving the Vicarage gates, looking very quiet and thoughtful, and he would have passed Straggalls unnoticed, had not that young lady been ready to recognise him, which, nerved as she was by her pleasant feeling of self-satisfied importance, she did by first nearly causing him to tumble over her, as she made the customary bob by way of incense, and then saying aloud—
“Plee, sir, I’ve got a letter.”
“A letter, child! Let me see—oh, it is Straggalls.”
“Yes, sir—Annie Straggalls, sir, plee, sir.”
“Then why don’t you give me the letter, child? Who is it from?”
“Teacher, plee, sir.”
A flush came into the vicar’s pale cheeks, and he raised his drooping lids as he impatiently held out his hand and waited while Ann Straggalls struggled to produce the letter. She had had some difficulty in placing it in what she considered to be a safe receptacle, forcing it down below the string that ran round the top of her frock. That struggle, however, was nothing to the one which now took place to release the missive, for the note had crept down to somewhere about Ann Straggalls’ waist where it was lying so comfortable and warm that it refused to be dislodged, in spite of the pushing of one hand, and the thrustings down of the other. The young lady posed herself in a variety of attitudes, reaching up, bending down, leaning first on one side, then upon the other, but all in vain. She grew red in the face, her hands were hot, and the vicar became more and more impatient; but the letter was not forthcoming, and at last she exclaimed, with a doleful expression of countenance—
“Plee, sir, I can’t get it out.”
“You’ve lost it,” cried the vicar angrily.