As a matter of fact there was not, but Sally was not the girl to admit it. She remained, therefore, obstinately mute.
“Now look ’ee here, my maid,” resumed Sol, after a full minute’s pause. “I must have a answer to this ’ere question afore things get any forrarder. I’ll give ’ee till to-morrow to think it over, and then it must be ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ If ye’ve got a young man of your own then ye may cry ‘hands off,’ an’ I’ll let ’ee alone. If ye haven’t—there bain’t no reason in life why you an’ me shouldn’t start keepin’ company reg’lar. So think it over, maidie.”
Having now reached the top of the slope, Sally whipped up Diamond, and the horse proceeded at its usual trot, Sol jogging beside it according to his custom. When Sally’s home came in sight he disappeared into the darkness with a cheery good night, leaving Sally disconcerted, angry, and sorely perplexed.
She already liked Sol very much; she would probably like him more when she had time and opportunity to study his character, but to be pressed thus to come to a definite decision at so short a notice—it was unfair—it was cruel! Above all to be forced to own straight out that she had no other lover—how could she bring herself to make such a humiliating confession?
Very little did Sally sleep that night, and when she looked up in the morning from her untasted breakfast and announced that she had a headache, she was sufficiently pale to alarm her grandmother.
“I don’t think I can ever go joggin’ off in that wold cart to-day,” continued Sally, dismally. “Couldn’t you go, grammer, for once? ’Tis a lovely day, look see, an’ there bain’t so much doin’ of a Tuesday.”
“Well, to be sure,” grumbled the old woman, “’tis a pretty notion. What’s to become o’ the wash if I’m to go a-traipsin’ round the country wi’ the cart?”
“Oh, I’ll manage the wash!” cried Sally, eagerly. “The steam ’ull do me good, I think. ’Tis the neuralgy what be a-troublin’ of I. I’ll finish the washin’, an’ get on wi’ the ironin’, if ye’ll let me, grammer?”
Mrs Roberts assented, after much murmuring and a good deal of sarcastic comment on the “neshness” of the rising generation. There was never no talk of newralgy or oldralgy neither when she was a maid, she said, an’ she was sure she didn’t know what the world was a-comin’ to.
Nevertheless she duly started off, encasing her spare figure in Sally’s warm jacket, and covering her head with an old sailor hat which had once belonged to the girl. Sally, indeed, had pressed these articles upon her grandmother with an exuberance of affection which had somewhat mollified that old lady, and stood leaning against the door-post as Diamond and the van jogged out of sight. Her face was pink enough to denote that the “newralgy” was not in a very acute stage, and all at once she burst into a fit of laughter, and clapped her hands.