‘My missus,’ remarked Fiander, following out his own train of thoughts—‘that’s the second one: I buried her a year come Michaelmas—she was a wonderful hand at the Ha’skim cheeses. A very stirring body she was! I do miss her dreadful; and these here dairy-women as ye hire they be terrible folk for waste—terrible! I reckon I’ll be a lot out of pocket this year.’
‘We all have our troubles, you see,’ said Rosalie, with tears still hanging on her black lashes. ‘Well, I thank you for your kind words, sir; they seem to have done me good. I think I’ll go in, now. I don’t want to meet any of the folk.’
‘Bide a bit, my dear,’ said the farmer, ‘bide a bit! I’ve summat to ax ye. You bain’t thinkin’ of going to service, ye say, and ye don’t rightly know where to look for a home?’
Rosalie stared at him. He was laughing in a confused, awkward way, and his face was growing redder and redder. Before she could answer he went on:
‘There’s your name now—it be a pretty ’un. I do ’low it ’ud seem almost a pity to change it, an’ yet if ye was to lose the name ye might get the thing.’
‘I don’t understand you, sir,’ cried she, growing red in her turn.
‘Why, Goldring, you know. ’T is a token, as I said jist now. If you was to get married you would n’t be Goldring no more, and yet ye’d be getting a Gold Ring, d’ye see—a weddin’-ring!’
‘Oh,’ said Rosalie distantly.
‘If I might make so bold as to ax, have ye been a-keepin’ company wi’ any young man, miss?’
‘No,’ she returned, ‘I don’t care for young men.’