‘Well done,’ cried Fiander excitedly, ‘well done, my dear! That shows your spirit. Come, what ’ud ye say to an old one?’
His blue eyes were nearly jumping out of his head, his honest face was all puckered into smiles.
‘Come,’ he cried, ‘’t is an offer! Here be I, an old one, yet not so very old neither, and uncommon tough. I wants a missus terrible bad. I’ve a-been on the look-out for one this half-year, but I did n’t expect to take up with a leading article like you. Well, and ye be lookin’ for a home, and ye bain’t a-keepin’ company wi’ nobody. I ’d make ye so comfortable as ever I could. I ’d not grudge ye nothing, no more than your grandfather. I’ve a-worked hard all my life and I’ve got together a nice bit o’ money, and bought my farm. There’s seventy head of milch cows on it now, not to speak o’ young beasts and pigs and that. Ye might be missus there, and make so many cheeses as ever ye pleased. How old might ye be, my maid?’
‘Eighteen,’ returned Rosalie tremulously; she had been gazing at him with large startled eyes, but had made no attempt to interrupt him.
‘Eighteen! Well, and I’m fifty-eight. There’s forty years a-tween us, but, Lord, what’s forty years? I can mind when I were eighteen year of age the same as if ’t were yesterday, and I can mind as I did think myself as old and as wise as I be now. Come, my dear, what’s forty year? I’m hale and hearty, and I’d be so good to ye as ever I could; and you be lonesome and desolate—thrown upon the world, as I say. Come, let’s make it up together comfortable. Say the word, and ye can snap your fingers at anyone who interferes wi’ ye. My place is just so big as this—bigger. Well, now, is it a bargain?’
‘I think it is,’ murmured Rosalie. ‘I—I don’t know what else to do, and I think you look kind.’
* * *
Late on that same evening Mr. Fiander reached home; and after attending to his horse and casting a cursory glance round to ascertain that nothing had gone wrong in his absence, he betook himself across the fields to the house of his next neighbour and great crony, Isaac Sharpe.
He found his friend seated in the armchair by the chimney corner. Isaac, being a bachelor-man, paid small heed to the refinements which were recently beginning to be in vogue among his class, and habitually sat in the kitchen. The old woman who acted as housekeeper to him had gone home, and he was alone in the wide, flagged room, which looked cheerful enough just now, lit up as it was by the wood fire, which danced gaily on the yellow walls, and threw gigantic shadows of the hams and flitches suspended from the great oaken beams, on the ceiling. He was just in the act of shaking out the ashes from his pipe, previous to retiring for the night, when Elias entered, and greeted him with no small astonishment.
‘Be it you, ’Lias? I were just a-goin’ to lock up and go to roost.’