"Well I never, Jane! you are not a-going to lug along that there big umbrella, are you?" cried Miss Susan, halting at the threshold, and putting up a striped parasol the size of a dinner-plate.
"I am not sure about the weather," returned Jane, looking at the sky. "I should not like to get wet. What do you think of it, aunt?"
"I think it likely to rain before you are back again: and you will either take the umbrella, Jane or you will put off that best bonnet for your old one. What is the matter with the umbrella, Susan Pike?--It will not throw discredit upon anybody."
It was, in fact, a handsome, though very large umbrella of green silk, a present to Jane from Miss Hallet. Susan shrugged her shoulders when they were out of sight; and Miss Hallet wondered for the hundredth time at Jane's making a companion of that common, illiterate girl.
She sat down to read the newspaper after they were gone, took her tea, and at dusk put on her things to go down the cliff. It was a very dull evening, dark before its time: heavy clouds of lead colour covered the sky. In a rather remote angle of the village lived the blacksmith, one Joe Brown; a small, silent, sooty kind of man in a leather apron, who might be seen at his forge from early morning to late night. He was there now, hammering at a piece of iron, as Miss Hallet entered.
"Good-evening, Brown."
Brown looked up at the address, and discerned who the speaker was by the red glare of his fire--Miss Hallet. He touched his hair in answer, and gave her back the good-evening.
She told him at once what she wanted, putting her veil aside to speak. The key of a drawer had been mislaid in her house, and she wished Brown to come and open it.
"Unlock him, or pick him, mum?" asked Brown.
"Only to unlock it."