“You shut up, Johnny. If I pay Reed out of my own pocket, it’s nothing to anybody.”
On Tuesday he sent me to Reed’s again. It was a nice spring afternoon, but I’m not sure that I thanked him for giving me that walk. Especially when upon lifting the latch of the cottage door, I found it fastened. Down I sat on the low bench outside the open window to wait—where Cathy had sat many a time in the days gone by, making believe to nurse the children, and that foolish young Parrifer would be leaning against the pear-tree on the other side the path. I had to leave my message with Mrs. Reed; I supposed she had only stepped into a neighbour’s, and might be back directly, for the two little girls were playing at “shop” in the garden.
Buzz, buzz: hum, hum. Why, those voices were in the kitchen! The lower part of the casement was level with the top of my head; I turned round and raised my eyes to look.
Well! surprises, it is said, are the lot of man. It was his face, unless my sight deceived itself. The same blue eyes that were in the shop at Evesham the day before, were inside Mrs. Reed’s kitchen now: Mr. Tobias Jellico’s. The place seemed to be crowded with women. He was smiling and talking to them in the most persuasive manner imaginable, his hands waving an accompaniment, on one of which glittered a ring with a yellow stone in it, a persuasive look on his rather well-featured face.
They were a great deal too agreeably engrossed to see me, and I looked on at leisure. A sort of pack, open, rested on the floor; the table was covered with all kinds of things for women’s dress; silks, cottons, ribbons, mantles; which Mrs. Reed and the others were leaning over and fingering.
“Silks ain’t for the like of us; I’d never have the cheek to put one on,” cried a voice that I knew at once for shrill Peggy Dickon’s. Next to her stood Ann Dovey, the blacksmith’s wife; who was very pretty, and vain accordingly.
“What kind o’ stuff d’ye call this, master?” Ann Dovey asked.
“That’s called laine,” answered Jellico. “It’s all pure wool.”
“It’s a’most as shiny as silk. I say, Mrs. Reed, d’ye think this ’ud wear?”
“It would wear for ever,” put in Jellico. “Ten yards of it would make as good a gown as ever went on a lady’s back; and the cost is but two shillings a yard.”