“Never mind lunch, my good soul. A crust of bread and cheese would be enough.”
“Oh, it won’t be quite so bad as that. Miss Eve likes my chiss-cakes, and she shall have a matrimony cake to her afternoon tea.”
“Nancy, I want a little serious talk with you,” Vansittart began gravely, when they had walked a little way from the house, and were standing side by side in front of the untidy patch where the vegetable marrows had swollen to huge orange-coloured gourds. “I am full of fear about Miss Peggy.”
“Oh, sir, so am I, so am I,” cried Nancy, bursting into tears. “I didn’t want to frighten dear Miss Eve—I beg pardon, sir, I never can think of her as Mrs. Vansittart.”
“Never mind, Nancy. You were saying——”
“I didn’t want to frighten your sweet young lady in the midst of her happiness; but when I saw that dear child beginning to go off just like her poor mother——”
“Oh, Nancy!” cried Vansittart, despairingly, with his hand on the Yorkshirewoman’s rough red arm. “Is that a sure thing? Did Mrs. Marchant die of consumption?”
“As sure as you and I are standing here, sir. It was a slow decline, but it was consumption, and nothing else. I’ve heard the doctors say so.”
CHAPTER XIX.
“HE SAID, ‘SHE HAS A LOVELY FACE.’”