The deceit unsuspected, and only the willingness appreciated, Mrs Morgan rejoins:
“Do! that’s a dear girl! It’s very good of you, Mary. Here’s the money.”
While the delighted mother is counting out the shillings, the dutiful daughter whips on her cloak—the night is chilly—and adjusts her hat, the best holiday one, on her head; all the time thinking to herself how cleverly she has done the trick. And with a smile of pardonable deception upon her face, she trips lightly across the threshold, and on through the little flower garden in front.
Outside the gate, at an angle of the enclosure wall, she stops, and stands considering. There are two ways to the Ferry, here forking—the long lane and the shorter footpath. Which is she to take? The path leads down along the side of the orchard; and across the brook by the bridge—only a single plank. This spanning the stream, and originally fixed to the rock at both ends, has of late come loose, and is not safe to be traversed, even by day. At night it is dangerous—still more on one dark as this. And danger of no common kind at any time. The channel through which the streams runs is twenty feet deep, with rough boulders in its bed. One falling from above would at least get broken bones. No fear of that to-night, but something as bad, if not worse. For it has been raining throughout the earlier hours of the day, and there in the brook, now a raging torrent. One dropping into it would be swept on to the river, and there surely drowned, if not before.
It is no dread of any of these dangers which causes Mary Morgan to stand considering which route she will take. She has stepped that plank on nights dark as this, even since it became detached from the fastenings, and is well acquainted with its ways. Were there nought else, she would go straight over it, and along the footpath, which passes the ‘big elm.’ But it is just because it passes the elm she has now paused and is pondering. Her errand calls for haste, and there she would meet a man sure to delay her. She intends meeting him for all that, and being delayed; but not till on her way back. Considering the darkness and obstructions on the footwalk she may go quicker by the road though roundabout. Returning she can take the path.
This thought in her mind, with, perhaps, remembrance of the adage, ‘business before pleasure,’ decides her; and drawing closer her cloak, she sets off along the lane.