The summer went on. August was waning. One morning when Mr. Duffham had called in and was helping Mrs. Todhetley to give Lena a spoonful of jam (with a powder in it), at which Lena kicked and screamed, Grizzel ran into the room in excitement so great, that they thought she was going into a fit.
“Why, what is it?” questioned Mrs. Todhetley, with a temporary truce to the jam hostilities. “Has either of the cows kicked you down, Grizzel?”
“I’m—I’m come into a fortin!” shrieked Grizzel hysterically, laughing and crying in the same breath.
Mr. Duffham put her into a chair, angrily ordering her to be calm—for anger is the best remedy in the world to apply to hysterics—and took a letter from her that she held out. It told her that her Uncle Clay was dead, and had left her a bequest of forty pounds. The forty pounds to be paid to her in gold whenever she should go and apply for it. This letter had come by the morning post: but Grizzel, busy in her dairy, had only just now opened it.
“For the poor old uncle to have died in June, and them never to ha’ let me hear on’t!” she said, sobbing. “Just like ’em! And me never to have put on a bit o’ mourning for him!”
She rose from the chair, drying her eyes with her apron, and held out her hand for the letter. As Mrs. Todhetley began to say she was very glad to hear of her good luck, a shy look and a half-smile came into the girl’s face.
“I can get the home now, ma’am, with all this fortin,” she whispered.
Molly banged her pans about worse than ever, partly in envy at the good luck of the girl, partly because she had to do the dairy work during Grizzel’s absence in Gloucestershire: a day and a half, which was given her by Mrs. Todhetley.
“There won’t be no standing anigh her and her finery now,” cried rampant Molly to the servants. “She’ll tack her blue ribbons on to her tail as well as her head. Lucky if the dairy some fine day ain’t found turned all sour!”