“Rather. Some bales of twist have come in from Messrs. Evans, of Darley-Abbey Mills. I must see them unpacked, and compare the twist with samples. But—your motive for asking?”
“Oh, if you are busy—— Well, perhaps after tea will be better; it will be cooler. I wish you would just take Ellen a good long walk; I found her fainting with the heat this morning.”
Ellen coloured vividly.
“Augusta!” she remonstrated.
“And yourself, Miss Ashton?” questioned he.
“Oh, I have a heap of clear-starching to do. My frills and laces are in a woeful plight. I shall be clap-clap-clap all the afternoon, and this sultry weather prohibits ironing until there is a cool evening breeze to fan me through the window. Without it I should be as likely to faint as Ellen.”
Miss Chadwick made light of her faintness, and objected, if not too strenuously, to be so disposed of; but Augusta, in her old wilful way, insisted, and Jabez, with his friend’s letter on his mind, was not likely to throw opposition in the way. So, notwithstanding his recent rebuff, he was once more “Miss Ashton’s humble servant to command.”
After an early tea, which was but a fiction to all three, Augusta was left behind, busy with a box-iron and her lady-like laundry of lace and muslin in the house-place, whilst Ellen Chadwick and Jabez went rambling with the winding waters of the translucent Goyt, under umbrageous trees on pleasant mountain slopes, where foxgloves nodded and horsetail grasses bent before them, and only an occasional reaper or gleaner crossed their path.
Had these two been incipient lovers, no more embarrassing silence could have fallen upon them. If Jabez, her junior by two years, had had a tussle to keep his love within bounds, there had at least been a glimmer of hope in the distance, and the struggle was upwards. Ellen had been trained from her childhood to keep her naturally strong feelings under control; but there was a war in her breast between maidenly shame and unsought, hopeless love, and the two hacked at each other and at her heart in the rayless dark, and the struggle was downwards.