Sally dried her eyes, and held out her hand to her husband: “I will,” she said.
She actually kept her resolution, and Jim had good reason to be grateful to his mistress for that happy thought of hers, though he sometimes said with a laugh, that she had taught him a lesson too, and that he would rather plant cabbages all day than sew on a dozen buttons.
HOW NED BLANCHARD EMIGRATED
Alice Blanchard was wheeling the perambulator slowly along the most rutty curve of the “Drove,” or steep lane which led from the high road to the downs, when she caught sight of her father’s sturdy figure behind the almost leafless hedge. Farmer Bolt was a short, thick-set man, with more brown in hair and beard than was usual in a man of his years, and with a corresponding amount of unlooked-for vigour and energy in his sturdy frame. He was at work now on a task that would have been despised by most men of his standing. He was clipping one of his own hedges in fact, wielding his bill-hook with a rapidity and dexterity which did not prevent his keeping a sharp look-out on the movements of the men who were carting swedes at the further end of the field.
Alice wedged the “pram” firmly against the bank, pulled on the baby’s hood, which had fallen back, arranged its golden fluff of hair so that a becoming tuft appeared beneath the frill, and then going to the other end of the small vehicle made little Abel sit straight and smoothed out the creases in his pinafore.
“Ye’ve got your face all of a mess wi’ blackberries,” she said, in a vexed tone. “I don’t know whatever granfer’ll think of ’ee. There, I reckoned to tidy thee up in grandma’s room afore he see’d thee.”
As Abel was strapped fast in his seat, and could by no possibility have procured the blackberries without his mother’s aid, the reproach seemed a trifle unreasonable; but as Abel had not yet reached a time of life when he could discourse on feminine inconsequence, he merely smiled broadly, and repeated the word “b’ackberries” in an expectant tone.
“Bless your little heart,” said Alice. “That’s granfer, look-see, t’other side o’ the hedge. Ye must call out ‘granfer,’ when we get a-nigh en.”
She shook out her own dress, a somewhat faded print, and set her hat straight, apparently anxious to present as brave an appearance in her father’s eyes as in former days she had to those of her admirers.
A few years ago Alice Bolt had been the handsomest girl in the parish, and even now, though her figure had lost much of its roundness, and her curly dark hair was arranged with less skill, was pretty enough to call for a second glance from all who passed her.