She sat quietly in her mother’s chair and folded her hands on her lap.
She had got a task to perform, but the pain, the agony, which such work ought to cause her was not present at this moment. Nat should have his mate’s money back again, but Jill must tell him that she could never be his wife.
“There’s no help for it,” she muttered. “I must tell Nat as I can’t never wed him. I must make myself seem bad in his eyes. There ain’t nothing else for me to do. He’ll never know now, never to his dying day, that poor mother stole that ere money. The money part ’ull seem all right to him, but Jill—he’ll allers think o’ Jill as fickle and false. I must make him think that—there’s no help for me. I’ll wed Silas, and I’ll try to be good to him, and I must forget Nat wot I loves.”
Thoughts like these passed swiftly through the tired girl’s brain. She knew that she must soon speak cruel words. She must say good-bye to Nat.
“And I love him mor’n aught else in all the wide world,” she groaned. “I love mother—oh, I do love mother—but Nat—Nat comes first. If it were a case o’ choosing, perhaps I’d be mean enough to cling on to Nat, and let poor mother go, but it ain’t a case of choosing. Nat’s young and strong; he ha’ got a true, true heart, and an honest face, and he’s ’spectable—oh, he’s bitter ’spectable. There are lots of nice girls in the world, and Nat ’ull get his pick, and it’s best for him to have nothing to say to a girl what have a mother what drinks. Nat’s all right; he’ll comfort hisself soon; it’ll be easy for Nat to get another wife; but poor mother, she has no one but me, for the boys they don’t count. Mother suffers bad pain, and she’s nearly distraught with one sorrow and another. It ain’t a case o’ choice. I must cling to poor mother.”
When Jill came to this point in her reflections she rose and went into the inner room. Seeing her dishevelled and untidy appearance in the little square of looking-glass, her first instinct was to brush her black hair smooth, and wash her face, and bring her whole little person back to the absolute order and fresh neatness which was part of her beauty; but on second thoughts she refrained from doing this. Her object now was to put Nat against her.
“It’ll cut him much less to the ’art ef he sees for his own self that I ain’t the Jill he thought I were,” she murmured.
She threw off her shawl, therefore, and, with a sigh of physical discomfort, came back again to the kitchen.
She had scarcely done so before Nat’s knock was heard at the door. She went at once and opened it for him.
“Is that you?” she said. “You might ha’ come sooner. I were getting tired o’ waiting; it’s dull settin’ indoors on a fine Sunday. Come in ef you want to, though.”