“Oh, yes,” said Jill; “but when a man’s like you, Silas Lynn, he’s quite sure to keep his word; he needn’t be fretted ’bout what’s quite sure.”
Silas gazed straight up at Jill while she was speaking, and a queer, very mournful smile lingered round his lips.
“Yer think, then, Jill,” he said, “as I’d make a real good mate to yer?”
“I do, Silas.”
“Yer know as I loves you, my gel.”
“Yes, Silas, yes.” Her own lips began to tremble. She turned away.
“Jill,” continued Silas, “there’s a weight on my mind, and I must speak, or I’ll die. It’s a weight o’ love, little gel. I’m a rough man, and I has had a rough life. ’Cept the flowers, I never has had to do with anything soft or dainty. I cared for my mother, in course, and she wor good as good could be; but she worn’t like you, Jill, with the skin o’ a peach, and the look of all the loveliest flowers made by God Almighty put together. You came to me, Jill, and when you put your little ’ands into mine, then I knowed what love were. It’s a mighty thing, Jill, for any girl to get all the love of a strong man like me—the love that has been gathering up in me for close on forty year. Some folks, they love dozens o’ people; they’ll give a little love to this one, and t’other one—they, so to speak, splits up their love. But that ain’t me. In all the wide wide world I love no one but you, little Jill, so you can guess as you has got something strong—when you has won the love o’ a man like me.”
Silas’s words came out with slow pauses, they seemed to be wrung from him. His eyes were fixed upon the girl he was addressing. She turned paler and paler as he spoke. When he stopped, she burst into tears.
“Silas,” she said, “I wish as you wouldn’t love me in that sort of awful way—”
“I can’t help it, my dear; it’s all with me, or it’s nought.”