“The sooner you come back the better,” continued Molly, fiercely. “For it’s not me and that wench we’ve got now as is going to stop together. I had to call the missis into the dairy this blessed morning, and show her the state it was in. So you’ll come back, Grizzel—and we’ll be glad to see you.”
Grizzel nodded her head: her heart was too full to speak.
“And as to that false villain of a Roper, as could serve a woman such a pitiful trick, I only wish I had the doctoring of him! He should get a—a—a——” Molly’s voice, pitched in a high tone, died gradually away. What on earth was it, stepping in upon them? Some most extraordinary object, who opened the door softly, and came in with a pitch. Molly peered at it in the darkness with open mouth.
A cry from Grizzel. A cry half of terror, half of pain. For she had recognized the object to be a man, and George Roper. George Roper with his hair and handsome whiskers cut off, and white sleeves in his brown coat—so that he looked like a Merry Andrew.
He seemed three parts stupefied: not at all like a traveller in condition to set off to America. Sinking into the nearest wooden chair, he stared at Grizzel in a dazed way, and spoke in a slow, questioning, wondering voice.
“I can’t think what it is that’s the matter with me.”
“Where be your whiskers—and your hair?” burst forth Molly.
The man gazed at her for a minute or two, taking in the question gradually; he then raised his trembling hand to either side his face—feeling for the whiskers that were no longer there.
“A nice pot o’ mischief you’ve been a getting into!” cried sharp Molly. “Is that your own coat? What’s gone of the sleeves?”