“It bain’t,” cried her husband.
Annie tossed her head. “He be a regular sammy,” she remarked.
“And ’tisn’t as if a maid hadn’t plenty of other chaps to walk with,” chimed in Maggie.
From the farthest corner a little voice suddenly sounded, “He be a very kind man, Olf be. He be a very kind man.”
“Do you think so, Kitty?” called out the farmer good-naturedly. “Hark to the little maid! You think Olf be a kind man, do ye, Kitty?”
“Don’t talk so much and mind your work, Kitty,” said Mrs. Inkpen severely. “Nobody axed your opinion. The idea,” she continued, in an angry undertone to her husband, “of a little chit, the same as that, puttin’ in her word. What does she know about Olf, or what kind of a man he is? You will have to be lookin’ out for somebody else to take Olf’s place, that’s what I’m thinkin’,” she remarked presently to her husband. “’Tis a pity. Olf be a bit of a sammy, as Annie do say, but he is a good worker and never gives no trouble. I could wish somebody else had won the fortun’.”
The two girls were now gossiping together and interchanging various opinions derogatory to Olf, and eulogistic of sundry other youths with whom it would appear they “walked” by preference. By-and-by the milking was concluded, and the farmer and his women-folk went in to breakfast, Maggie having taken her departure some minutes before.
As the cows began to troop pasturewards again, Olf, standing by the yard-gate, noticed a girl’s figure come darting forth from the obscurity of the shed. It was Kitty, a workhouse-bred orphan, whom Mrs. Inkpen had engaged as general help in house and dairy. She was a little creature, small and slight, with a round freckled face and flaming red hair. I say “flaming” advisedly, for it seemed to give forth as well as to receive light. Her face, habitually pink and white, was now extremely pink all over as she paused opposite Olf; a dimple peeped in and out near the corner of her mouth, and her teeth flashed in a smile that was half-shy and half-mischievous.
“Please, Olf,” said she, “if you are lookin’ for a wife, I’m willin’ to have ye.”
Olf, who had been about to pass through the gate in the rear of his charges, wheeled about and faced her, scratching his jaw meditatively.