“I’m not so sure on that,” replied Peters. “Gels say ‘yes’ for lots o’ motives—the wish for a home, maybe; oh, lots o’ motives. I’d have said that a young thing like Jill ’ud choose for her mate a lad with good looks hisself, and youth; that’s what I’d have said from my experience of the faymale ’eart; but there, Silas, don’t take on, man, I wor wrong about beauty and goodness goin’ together, so maybe I’m wrong ’bout the t’other also. I can see that the gel has a great kindness for yer, Silas; but love, that’s quite another matter. What ails her eyes for instance? what’s back o’ them looking out at us all so gloomy-like? My word, them eyes haunts me; seems as ef a sperit was looking through ’em, werry patient, werry sad. I could cry when I thinks on ’em. What’s the matter, Silas? What ails yer, man?”
“You don’t s’pose as talk like yourn is pleasant to listen to,” replied Silas; “and you’re all wrong ’bout Jill not wanting to have me. Why, I’ll prove it to yer now as yer wrong. I asked her to be my wife one morning at the market, and I suppose she felt skir’t like, for she looked at me with her face as rosy as the day, and her eyes like great, deep wells, with the wonder that filled ’em, and she said, ‘No, no, Mr Lynn, it can’t be’; and she up with her basket and away she runned. Well, of course I said to myself, there’s an end o’ this; but, what do yer think, neighbour? The next morning early, soon arter daybreak, who should come down all the way from Lunnon to see me but this same little gel; she knocked at my door and called out to me to open to her; and when I come it wor, ‘Yes, yes, Mr Lynn, I will marry yer ef you’ll have me.’ Worn’t that pretty good proof of her loving me, eh, Peters?”
“I don’t deny as it wor,” said Peters.
Silas and Peters entered the small cottage of the latter, and, as Silas had to go to town in a couple of hours, they immediately parted for the night, Silas declining to go to bed, but declaring he could take a good sleep in Peters’s deep arm-chair.
Just before they said good-night the old man made a request.
“Ef yer has time, Silas,” he said, “I’d be much obleeged to yer if yer could call round to Saint Bartholomy’s Hospital and leave this little parcel for my sister, Rachel Riggs. It’s a wool shawl of hers, as she allers sets store on, and I had a card from her to say as she wor better, and wanted her shawl. You’d obleege me greatly, Silas, ef you could leave it.”
“Put it on the table there,” said Silas, “and I won’t forget.”
The old man went off to his own room, and Silas sat in the deep arm-chair and looked out at the summer night. There was nothing really to trouble him in the words that Peters had said, nevertheless they kept coming back in a teasing and irritating fashion.
It was Peters’s opinion that Jill did not love him. What folly! If ever a girl had gone out of her way to show that she loved a man, it was Jill. As to her face being somewhat pale, and as to the fact that her dark eyes were sad in their expression, was not that always the case? Had not Silas, who knew her so much better than Peters, always noticed that latent sadness in her charming face. He loved her all the better for it.
“It’s jest her kind heart,” he murmured; “it’s jest as there is trouble in the world, and she can’t help noticin’ of it. Why, see her to-night, when Mary Ann Hatton dropped the chaney saucer. Even that were too much for my Jill. Oh, yes, Peters is quite mistook. Jill loves me, for sure, and I’m jest the werry happiest feller in the wide world.”