“’Tis for me,” she said to herself, after gazing at this object for a minute or two. It generally took Hannah some little time to grasp an idea, but this one presented itself in a concrete form. “Dear, to be sure, I wonder what anyone can be writin’ to me for?”
She had pulled on her stout knitted stockings, and assumed the greater part of her underwear, before it occurred to her to open the letter and ascertain its contents. Even then she grasped the paper with a diffident finger and thumb, and turned it over and over before she could make up her mind to embark on its perusal.
“Dear!” she exclaimed, looking at the end in true feminine fashion, “’Tis from Giles!”
Her eyes opened wider and wider as she read the line which preceded the signature. “Your true and faithful.” She turned over the page, the colour deepening in a countenance already ruddy as the brick floor of the milk-house which she so frequently scrubbed.
“Well!” she ejaculated at last, drawing a long breath, “’Tis a offer—that’s what it be! Who’d ha’ thought o’ me gettin’ a offer!”
She mused for a little time, her face wreathed in smiles, and spelt over the letter again with increasing satisfaction.
“‘Meet I at the Little Wood at breakfast-time to-morrow’—that’s to-day.” Hannah’s wits were brightening under the influence of this unexpected stroke of good fortune. “‘I’d thank ye not to say nothin’ about me havin’ wrote.’. . . Well, an’ that’s well thought on. I d’ ’low I be jist so shy as he, an’ it ’ud ha’ been terr’ble arkward to ha’ talked about sich a letter as this here. . . . ‘I be wishful to take a second’—well, the man couldn’t speak plainer. . . . ‘The vittiest maid!’ Fancy him sayin’ that!”
At this period of her meditations Hannah was constrained to cross the room on tip-toe to the window, near which a small square looking-glass was suspended from a nail. She surveyed her own image with some curiosity but no little satisfaction, as with Giles’s eyes; regretted that her hair was growing grey about the temples, but consoled herself with the fact that it was still abundant and curly, and finally smiled broadly to herself.
“I d’ ’low if I do for him it’s all right!”
Suddenly she recollected with a start that if she was to be at the tryst at the hour named, she would have to get through her intervening labours with more than usual celerity.