"Enough! Enough! What a memory you've got! Now I understand. You're a country girl."
"Eessir," said Mary Ann, her face lighting up. "I mean yessir."
"Well, that redeems you a little," thought Lancelot, with his whimsical look. "So it's missus, is it, who's taught you Cockneyese? My instinct was not so unsound, after all. I dare say you'll turn out something nobler than a Cockney drudge." He finished aloud, "I hope you went a-milking."
"Eessir, sometimes; and I drove back the milk-trunk in the cart, and I rode down on a pony to the second pasture to count the sheep and the heifers."
"Then you are a farmer's daughter?"
"Eessir. But my feyther—I mean my father—had only two little fields when he was alive, but we had a nice garden, with plum trees, and rose bushes, and gillyflowers—"
"Better and better," murmured Lancelot, smiling. And, indeed, the image of Mary Ann skimming the meads on a pony in the sunshine, was more pleasant to contemplate than that of Mary Ann whitening the wintry steps. "What a complexion you must have had to start with!" he cried aloud, surveying the not unenviable remains of it. "Well, and what else did you do?"
Mary Ann opened her lips. It was delightful to see how the dull veil, as of London fog, had been lifted from her face; her eyes sparkled.
Then, "Oh, there's the ground-floor bell," she cried, moving instinctively toward the door.
"Nonsense; I hear no bell," said Lancelot.