“Me crying!” returned Grizzel. “It’s the sun a shinin’ in my eyes, sir.”
Was it! “Look here, Grizzel, why don’t you put an end to this state of bother? You won’t be able to milk the cows next.”
“’Tain’t any in’ard bother o’ that sort as ’ll keep me from doing my proper work,” returned she, with a flick to the handle of the pail.
“At any rate, you can’t marry two men: you would be taken up by old Jones the constable, you know, and tried for bigamy. And I’m sure you must keep them in ferment. George Roper’s gone off with a queer look on his face. Take him, or dismiss him.”
“I’d take him to-morrow, but for one thing,” avowed the girl in a half whisper.
“His short wages, I suppose—sixteen shillings a week.”
“Sixteen shillings a week short wages!” echoed Grizzel. “I call ’em good wages, sir. I’d never be afraid of getting along on them with a steady man—and Roper’s that. It ain’t the wages, Master Johnny. It is, that I promised mother never to begin life upon less than a cottage and some things in it.”
“How do you mean?”
“Poor mother was a-dying, sir. Her illness lasted her many a week, and she might be said to be a-dying all the time. I was eighteen then. ‘Grizzy,’ says she to me one night, ‘you be a likely girl and ’ll get chose afore you be many summers older. But you must promise me that you’ll not, on no temptation whatsoever, say yes to a man till he has a home of his own to take you to, and beds and tables and things comfortable about him. Once begin without ’em, and you and him ’ll spend all your after life looking out for ’em; but they’ll not come any the more for that. And you’ll be at sixes-and-sevens always: and him, why perhaps he’ll take to the beer-shop—for many a man does, through having, so to say, no home. I’ve seen the ill of it in my days,’ she says, ‘and if I thought you’d tumble into it I’d hardly rest quiet in the grave where you be so soon a-going to place me.’ ‘Be at ease, mother,’ says I to her in answer, ‘and take my promise, which I’ll never break, not to set-up for marriage without a home o’ my own and proper things in it.’ That promise I can’t break, Master Johnny; and there has laid the root of the trouble all along.”