Grizzel came back in time; bringing her forty pounds in gold wrapped-up in the foot of a folded stocking. The girl had as much sense as one here and there, and a day or two after her arrival she asked leave to speak to her mistress. It was to say that she should like to leave at the end of her year, Michaelmas, if her mistress would please look out for some one to replace her.
“And what are you going to do, Grizzel, when you do leave? What are your plans?”
Grizzel turned the colour of a whole cornfield of poppies, and confessed that she was going to be married to George Roper.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Todhetley. But she had nothing to urge against it.
“And please, ma’am,” cried Grizzel, the poppies deepening and glowing, “we’d like to make bold to ask if the master would let to us that bit of a cottage that the Claytons have went out of.”
The Mater was quite taken aback. It seemed indeed that Grizzel had been laying her plans to some purpose.
“It have a nice piece o’ ground to grow pertaters and garden stuff, and it have a pigsty,” said Grizzel. “Please, ma’am, we shall get along famous, if we can have that.”
“Do you mean to set up a pig, Grizzel?”
Grizzel’s face was all one smile. Of course they did. With such a fortune as she had come into, she intended herself and her husband to have everything good about them, including a pig.
“I’ll give Grizzel away,” wrote Tod when he heard the news of the legacy and the projected marriage. “It will be fun! And if you people at home don’t present her with her wedding-gown it will be a stingy shame. Let it have a good share of blue bows.”