“Oh, Mr Lynn, ha’ you seen my gel?” exclaimed Poll. “Oh, you don’t know the awful ’eart hunger as is over me, never to see her or to hear of her. Oh, Mr Lynn, when I seed you a-coming in, I thought as you wor, may be, an angel fro’ heaven. I said to myself, maybe Jill has been a-buying flowers from Silas Lynn. Oh, my gel, my sweet, sweet gel. Ha’ you seen her, Mr Lynn?”
“Yes, yes, Mrs Robinson,” said Silas. “Make your mind heasy. Jill’s all right. Why I seen her this werry morning.”
“Oh, and is she well; do she look happy?”
“She ought to look well, and she ought to be happy. It’ll be her wedding-day to-morrow. Ef a gel don’t look happy on the eve of her wedding-day, why she never will, accordin’ to my thinkin’.”
“Oh, praise the Lord,” said Poll, “then I ain’t done the mischief I thought. I wor mortal feared as she had broke off with Nat Carter, but ef they’re to be married to-morrow why it’s all right, and I ain’t done the mischief I thought.”
“Who did yer say as she were to marry?” asked Silas in a queer, thick, husky voice. “Wot name did yer say, Nat—Nat Carter?”
“Yes, yes; you must know him for sure—that ’ansome young costermonger as allers goes in good time to the market. You must mind him, Mr Lynn, a tall, well-set-up lad, with blue eyes and as fair as Jill’s dark. Why they has loved each other, them two, ever since my Jill were a little dot at school. Never seen anything like the way they took on one for t’other. Wot’s the matter, Mr Lynn? You must know o’ this, surely.”
“Yes, of course,” said Lynn; he made a supreme effort to control himself and sat down on the chair by Poll’s bedside.
“You must know Nat Carter,” she continued, fixing her anxious eyes on him.
“Yes, yes, for sure.”