She nodded, and disappeared into the handkerchief again. “To think, after all these years, and the offers I’ve had, I should take and fall in love with a common vagabond!” she said, into its folds. “Enough to make my poor mother turn in her grave! For I was brought up respectable, Mr. Jack!”
“So was I, and devilish dull I found it! But Chirk’s a good fellow: I like him. He’s head over ears in love with you, too.”
A convulsive sniff greeted this. “Well, if he wants to please me, he’ll stop holding people up, and so I’ve told him. Let him find Brean, like you want him to, and see if he can’t get rid of that Coate out of our house! But I’ll never marry any man while Miss Nell needs me—and need me she will, poor lamb, when the master goes! And that day’s not far distant.”
“I hope she won’t need you.”
This brought her head up. She looked very hard at him for a minute; and then got briskly to her feet, and shook out her skirts. “I hope she won’t, Mr. Jack—and that’s the truth!” She saw his hand held out, and clasped it warmly. “I have that torn shirt in my basket, and Mrs. Skeffling’s ironing your other one,” she said, reverting to her usual manner. “You won’t find she’s starched the points as they should be, but she’s done her best, and I hope, sir, it’ll be a lesson to you not to go jauntering about the country with only two shirts to your name!”
With these valedictory words, she took her departure; and John returned to his task of chopping wood. He was called from it by a shout of “Gate!” and went through the house to answer it, picking up the book of tickets on the way. A phaeton was drawn up on the Sheffield side of the gate; and holding the reins was Henry Stornaway, wearing a drab coat whose numerous shoulder-capes falsely proclaimed his ability to drive to an inch. A pair of showy, half-bred chestnuts, which the Captain mentally wrote down as bonesetters, were harnessed to the vehicle; and Mr. Stornaway was unable to produce any coin of less value than five shillings to pay for his sixpenny toll. He said, as John pulled a handful of coins out of his pocket: “Hallo! Don’t know you, do I? Where’s the other fellow?”
“Away, sir,” replied John, handing him his change.
“Away? Ay! But where’s he gone to?”
“Couldn’t say, sir,” said John, holding up the ticket.
“Nonsense! If you’re taking his place, of course you know where he is! Come on, now: no humbug!”