“Eh?”
“She’s going—Hallam’s wife, yonder—to see owd Sir Gordon, and beg Hallam off; and, look here, I wean’t hev it!”
Gemp banged his stick down upon the counter in a way that made the cloth spread thereon rise in waves, and became very broad of speech here, though it was a matter of pride amongst the Castor people that they spoke the purest English in the county, and were not broad of utterance, like the people on the wolds, and “down in the marsh.”
Volume Two—Chapter Eighteen.
A Painful Meeting.
Whether Gemp would have it or no, Millicent Hallam was on her way to Sir Gordon’s quiet, old-fashioned house on the North Road—a house that was a bit of a mystery to the Castor children, whose young brains were full of conjecture as to what could be inside a place whose windows were blanks, and with nothing but a door to the road, and a high wall right and left to complete the blankness of the frontage.
It ought to have been called the backage; for Sir Gordon Bourne’s house was very pleasant on the other side, with a compact garden and flowers blooming to brighten it—a garden in which he never walked.
Millicent Hallam pulled at the swinging handle of the bell at Sir Gordon’s door with the determination of one who has called to demand a right.