“You’re damnably mistaken,” said he. “Frightened, indeed! I’ll see whose frightened: I know there was no marriage—I know it, and it won’t do tryin’ it on me, you’ll just get yourself into the wrong box; where’s the use of runnin’ your head into a cotton bag?”
“Cotton bag your own head. Who’s to do it?”
“They’ll be clumsy fingers that can’t tie that knot, lass. Come, you’re a clever girl, you’re not to be talking—not like a fool. I know everything about it. If you try that on, it will turn out bad. ’Taint easy to green Harry Fairfield; I don’t think he was ever yet fooled by a lass but where he chose to be fooled, and it’s pretty well allowed there’s no use trying to bully him.”
“I ought to like you, if all that be so,” said she, “for you are very like my own self.”
“I’m not tryin’ to bully you, girl, nor to sell ye, neither; ye were always a bit rash, and too ready wi’ your hand; but them’s not the worst folk goin’. We Fairfields has a touch o’ it, and we shouldn’t be o’er hard on quick-tempered folk like that. There was no lass that ever I met, gentle or simple, that could match ye for good looks and pleasant talk, and ye dress so beautiful, and if ye had but your eyes this minute, you’d have who ye liked at your feet.”
And Harry Fairfield repeated this view of her charms with an oath.
“If ifs and ans were pots and pans,” repeated the lady with a sigh of gratification, and with that foreign accent and peculiar drawl which made the homely proverb sound particularly odd; “I forget the end—there would be no use in tinkers, I think.”
“Well said, Bertha! but there’s none like ye, not one, this minute, so handsome,” exclaims he.
“Not that chit down at Carwell Grange, I dare say—eh?”
“Alice! Not fit to stand behind your chair. If ye could but see her, and just look in the glass, ye’d answer that question yourself,” he replied.