“We have some weeks yet, to be sure, to enjoy it. This is the last spot that looks desolate as winter comes on. No leafless trees, no strewn blossoms! The wall-flowers there on the pinnacle flourish late; and all is green and bright till the snow falls.”
“And after, surely,” said Letitia. “I should like to see icicles glistening on these arches, springing grey from the sheeted snow. I should like to see the ivy sprays bending under their white burden, or shaking it off in a shower of sparkles at the breeze’s bidding. O let us come here at Christmas!”
“If we do, you may chance to see another sight. You will see tracks of small feet in the snow, and catch some little girl, in her red cloak, stealing from the Wishing-Well.”
“The Wishing-Well! O where?”
“It springs from under an old stump behind this wall. Have you any wishes?”
“I will make some for the superstition’s sake.”
And immediately Letitia might be seen unbonneted, kneeling on the consecrated stone, and drinking the draught her husband had filled for her. Thus was she seen, as presently appeared. A voice reached them from one side, praying that her ladyship’s wishes might come to pass, be they what they might, as they must be for good and no harm to the people under her. Letitia sprang up, laughing, and her husband replaced her hat, calling to the well-wisher to show himself. He did so, not in the shape of a hardy labourer, with his farming or gardening tools on his shoulder; nor yet of a picturesque old man bending beneath his faggot. Such might better have beseemed the place: but this was a middle-aged, shrewd-looking little man, whom one would have guessed to be town-bred. He came forward, saying that he had a message for her ladyship from his wife;—my lord knew his wife.
“Not I,” said his lordship. “I did not know you had a wife.”
“May be not, my lord; but you know the woman. She that keeps the grocery shop, as you turn the corner in the village, your lordship remembers.”
“What! Nanny Sweet? So you have taken her to wife since I saw you last.”