“I’d make you as good a husband as I know how. Perhaps you’ll think of it.”
No answer. She was doubling her thread to sew on the button.
“Will you think of it, Miss Susan?”
“Well—yes, I will,” she said in a softer tone, “And if I decide to bring my mind to have you, John Drench, I’ll hope to make you a good and faithful wife.”
He held out his hand to shake hers upon the bargain. Their eyes met in kindliness: and John Drench knew that the Dunn Farm would have its mistress.
We were going to dress the church this year as we did the last. Clerk Bumford’s cough was bad, and the old sexton was laid by as usual. Tod and I got to the church early in the afternoon, and saw the Miss Pages wading their way through the coppice, over their ankles in snow: the one lady having finished her cake-making and the other her shirt-mending.
“Is Leek not here yet?” cried they in surprise. “We need not have made so much haste.”
Leek with his large truck of holly was somewhere on the road. He had started, as Miss Page said, while they were at dinner. And he was not to be seen!
“It is all through his obstinacy,” cried Susan. “I told him he had better take the highway, though it was a little further round; but he said he knew he could well get through the little valley. That’s where he has stuck, truck and all.”
John Drench came up as she was speaking. He had been on some errand to Church Dykely; and gave a bad account of the snow on the roads. This was the third day of it. The skies just now were blue as in spring; the sun, drawing towards the west, was without a cloud. After waiting a few minutes, John Drench started to meet Leek and help him on; and we cooled our heels in the church-porch, unable to get inside. As it was supposed Leek would be there sooner than any one else, the key of the church had been given to him that he might get the holly in. There we waited in the cold. At last, out of patience, Tod went off in John Drench’s wake, and I after him.