Silas, however, notwithstanding these soothing reflections, felt too excited to sleep. He was glad when the first faint brightness in the east told him that the time had come for him to rise and begin his long day’s work.
He softly left the cottage, and, going across the fields to his own small homestead, put the horses to the already carefully-packed waggon. Then going round to the cottage-door, he tapped with his knuckles at the window of the little bedroom where Aunt Hannah and Jill were sleeping. Jill was to accompany Silas back to town. She was dressed, and came out to him at once. Her face looked almost bright this morning; she had a faint colour in her cheeks, which was further deepened by the bright shawl which she wore round her head. When she came up to Silas and slipped her little brown hand into his, he instantly felt through his whole being that a glorious sun had arisen over the earth, and that old Timothy Peters must be fast approaching idiotcy.
“Come, Jill,” he exclaimed, “we’ll have a jolly ride into town. Why, yer ain’t cold, be yer my dear?”
“No, Silas.”
“Only I thought I see’d yer shiver. It’ll be werry hot by-and-by, but ef yer finds this hour of the morning chill, I’ll fetch out my sheep’s-skin rug to wrap yer up in.”
“No, no, Silas, I ain’t really cold. Let’s start at once, and maybe when we gets to the brow of the hill we’ll see the sun rise. I has been up early enough most days o’ my life, but I never seed the sun rise for all that.”
“It’s a sight to remember,” said Lynn. “Come along then, my choice little cuttin’, and we’ll get under weigh.”
As a rule, Silas was a very taciturn man; but on this particular morning it was he who did most of the talking.
“Eh, Jill,” he said once, as they approached London, “to think as you and me ’ull be husband and wife to-morrow. The delight o’ it is a’most past belief. When I thinks on you as keeping the cottage, bright, and cooking my meals for me, and watching as nobody comes and picks off the best blooms when I’m away at the market, I can scarce contain myself, I don’t believe in all the wide world there’ll be a happier pair nor you and me, Jill, for all that I am eight-and-thirty and you not seventeen yet.”
“I hope as I’ll make yer a good wife, Silas,” replied Jill.