“About a week or two arter, I was sendin’ her to fetch the washin’ back—I did use to wash for a lady what lived a mile away, and sometimes carrier did fetch it, and sometimes I did send Jenny. Well, ’twas a heavyish basket, and when I did see her marchin’ back down the path, I says to her:—
“‘You’ve a-been quicker nor I could ha’ looked for,’ I says.
“‘Oh, e-es,’ says she, ‘somebody helped I for to carry it.’
“‘Somebody,’ I says. ‘Who?’
“She went quite red, and opened her mouth and shut it again, and then she says very quick:—
“‘Oh, a man what I met, as said it did seem too heavy for I.’”
“Ah-h-h!” said Mrs. Cross, seizing her opportunity as the other paused for breath, “it was him?”
Mrs. Chaffey resented the other’s eagerness to jump to a conclusion, and continued in a voice of increased sternness, and without noticing the interruption:—
“Next day was a Sunday again. I wasn’t feelin’ so very well, so I did tell her she mid go to church that mornin’ an’ I’d bide at home. Well, that there little maid took so long a-dressin’ of herself as if she was a queen; so arter I’d called her once or twice I just went upstairs an’ looked in at her. I had my soft shoes on, and she didn’t hear I comin’.
“There she was, if you please, a-kneeling before her bed, a-turnin’ of her head this way an’ that, an’ a-lookin’ at herself in a wold lid of a biscuit-box, what she’d picked up somewheres an’ rubbed up till it did seem so bright as silver. There! the little impident hussy; she had stood it up against her pillow, an’ she was a-lookin’ at herself an’ a-holdin’ up a bit o’ blue ribbon, fust under her chin an’ then sideways again her hat.