“Dear Ant,” it said, “i don’t know if i can be spaired, but if the bos is willin i will cum. Yours truly nevew, S. Fry.”
His aunt pursed up her lips as she perused this document.
“He mid ha’ taken a bit more pains,” she said to herself; “he ha’n’t got this out of a book, anyhow.”
It was possible, indeed, that even The Complete Letter-Writer did not contain a missive from a young man who had been asked to spend his holidays with an aunt in the country, and that Simon, in consequence, was thrown on his own resources.
“But he don’t seem so very anxious to come,” she thought. “He mid ha’ said ‘Thank ye,’ too—Rosy did seem to be far more thankful. But Simon—p’r’aps he means better nor what he says.”
With this charitable reflection Becky laid aside the letters and went to feed her chickens.
Rosy, who was living at home, and in consequence not tied down to any particular date, arrived a day before the other guest. She was a pretty girl of the dark-haired, clear-skinned type so often to be seen in Dorset; her eyes were brown like her hair, and her complexion matched her name to a nicety. The carrier dropped her and her tin box at the corner of the lane which led to Mrs. Melmouth’s cottage, and she came staggering down to her aunt’s door bent in two beneath the weight of her belongings. Mrs. Melmouth stood on the threshold and watched her.
“That’s right,” she remarked, as the girl set down her trunk and straightened herself, breathless and laughing, “I be main glad to see ye. Ye be sich a handy maid, my dear. There, I declare ye’ve just come in nice time to get the tea.”
Now Rosy, who was tired and thirsty after her long jolting in the carrier’s van, had half-expected to find tea ready. She felt a little bewildered and slightly annoyed on being sent first to the well and then to the woodshed, and then having to reach down the best china from the top shelf, and, moreover, to dust it, conscious all the time of wearing her best frock with sleeves too tight at the wrist to turn up comfortably. It was a very crestfallen Rosy indeed who finally sat down to partake of that particularly well-earned cup of tea.
But Mrs. Melmouth was radiant.