“I’ve never answered an advertisement like that before,” she burst out. “But—it was fun, as you say. And I had put three advertisements in a paper for a situation—at three-and-sixpence for forty words. Three three-and-sixpences! Not a single answer! Something made me look at the Liddleshorn Herald. It was in the stationer’s shop—ordered specially for some customer. When I was a little thing I seem to remember that paper about at home. The name, Liddleshorn, was familiar. Something made me touch it, look down the advertisements. Then! You know!”
She put out her hands with a dramatic gesture. Jethro appeared to think that it was time he made his explanations of the situation.
“I did it for fun—at first,” he said. “Afterward I was rather taken with the idea. But not with the girls,” seeing her glance vindictively at the scattered letters. “I wanted to marry; Gainah’s getting too tight a hold on the place. And there is no one to entertain lady visitors—no mistress. It isn’t natural. I wanted a wife. I advertised for one. I wanted a change, too—a change of blood. It’s good for stock, why not for us? That’s the way I argued it out with myself.”
Her chin was sunk in the puffs of her white muslin blouse and the color was in her cheeks again. But he went on, apparently not noticing her confusion.
“For generations back every Jayne has married in the neighborhood. We are all related in some way; you meet the Jayne nose on a Crisp face—you have the Crisp chin—and a Furlonger little finger,” he crooked out his own, “on a Jayne hand. Nancy Turle has my father’s waving red hair, and I’ve got the Turles’ white skin.”
He tucked up the sleeve of his coat to show her his smooth, milky skin.
“I thought,” he continued, as she neither looked nor spoke, “that a change would be good. Change! You see it in stock; you see it in flowers. Those crimson phloxes,” he pointed through the window, “are twice as high this year because last autumn they were shifted in the border. And Gainah, who knows all about flowers, says she can’t grow heartsease three years running without lifting. They dwindle to farthing-faces. Even cabbage mustn’t follow cabbage. I said to myself that I’d graft new blood on the old Jayne stock.”
Pamela lifted her flaming face, and, putting out her thin foot, contemptuously kicked the nearest letter.
“Then you had better take one of these,” she said, with temper, “if, as you seem to think, I am a Crisp and your cousin.”
He looked at the foot which darted from her skirt.