“‘If ye think well on my offer, will ye meet I at the Little Wood at breakfast-time to-morrow? But, as I’m a shy man by natur’, I’d thank ye not to say nothin’ about me havin’ wrote to ye.
“‘Your true and faithful,
“‘Giles Neale.’”
When the hubbub of applause had subsided, a match was duly lighted, and Jem set to work. His task concluded, after much labour and consequent burning of matches, the document was read aloud, directed, and handed over to Lizzie, who undertook to slip it under Hannah’s door before retiring to rest herself.
“If she do say anythin’ to I about it, I’ll tell her I did hear a man’s foot goin’ through the cheese-room very late,” she added, giggling.
“Well, then, us’ll all post ourselves behind the hedge at back o’ the Little Wood,” cried Rose, jubilantly; “an’ then us’ll all run out an’ call ‘April Fools!’ so soon as they’ve a-made it up.”
“’Ees,” agreed Lizzie, “but don’t you sp’ile sport by runnin’ out too soon. Best wait till brewery whooter goes, an’ then all run out together—that’s the ticket.”
The resolution was carried unanimously, and the party separated for the night. The female section made its way towards the farmhouse, for the two milkmaids employed by Farmer Bellamy in addition to his own stalwart daughters, lodged on the premises; while the men and boys betook themselves to the little cluster of houses, a kind of off-shoot from the village proper, in which they had their homes.
Hannah Pethin was usually the first of that busy household to awake, and it was her duty to call her less alert companions. When, on the morning of this momentous first of April, she jumped out of bed, she stood for a moment or two rubbing her eyes and staring. There, in the centre of the very small patch of boarded floor which intervened between her bed and the door, lay a large white envelope, which bore her name in bold characters—
“Miss Hannah Pethin.”