“It will save him the strain of carrying the box. And then as to-morrow’s my day, I shall have to meet my cart at ‘The King of Prussia.’ ”
“Oh, Jinny, then you will!”
“Yes—but don’t tell him. Only say Ravens will call for the box at eight o’clock—that will give him time to walk if he jibs at the cart for himself.”
It had all been arranged with the obliging bird-of-all-work, and Ravens had left Blackwater Hall that evening, carolling even more blithely than usual, when Jinny found—evidently pushed under the house-door—a mysterious cocked-hat addressed “Miss Boldero.” With trembling fingers she opened it, her heart thumping. “To hell with Ravens! You can keep him!”
This utterly unexpected flash of an utterly unforeseen jealousy, and the thought that he had been drawn so spatially near again, was all that stood between her and despair that last dreadful night.
VIII
When the fateful Friday dawned, it found Jinny fast asleep, worn out after long listening to a wind that would soon be tossing a ship about. In those harsh hours she had felt it would be impossible to get up and go on her round in the morning. But no sooner were her eyes unsealed, than there sprang up in her mind the thought that, did she fail her customers to-day, gossip would at once connect her breakdown with Will’s departure. So far, she had reason to believe, Martha’s guess at their relations had not penetrated outside. But eyes were sharp and tongues sharper, and she must not be exposed to pity. Under this goad she sprang up instanter and did her hair carefully before the cracked mirror and dressed herself in her best and smartest. She would go around with gibe and laughter and fantasias on the horn, and whatever was consonant with celebrating the final retreat of the coach.
The morning was quiet after the blustrous night, but the year, like her fate, was at its dreariest moment—no colour in sky or garden, no hint of the Spring—and at breakfast a reaction overcame her. But this time her grandfather did not observe her depression: he was too full of the crime of ’Lijah, who—according to Martha—was putting his mother in the Chipstone poorhouse prior to installing his bride in Rosemary Villa. So garrulous was he this morning that Jinny—her mind morbidly possessed by a story of a miner who was found dead of starvation in the Bush with a bag of gold for his pillow—ceased to listen to his diatribes, retaining only an uneasy sense that he was twitching and jerking with the same excitement as when Martha had first come. “And Oi count ye’ll be doin’ the same with me one day,” she heard him say at last, for he was shaking her arm. “But Oi’d have ye know it’s my business, not yourn—Daniel Quarles, Carrier.”
Jinny wearily assured him that there was no danger of her ever marrying, and she felt vexed with Martha for coming and starting such agitated trains of thought in his aged brain. Possibly the foolish mother might even have broached to him her desire to rob him of his granddaughter.
“Ye ought to be glad Oi’ve give ye food and shelter and them fine clothes ye’ve titivated yourself with,” he went on, unsoothed, “bein’ as there ain’t enough in the business for myself. ’Tis a daily sacrifice, Jinny, and do ye don’t forgit it.”