“Don’t ’ee, ma’am,” implored Priscilla, “don’t ’ee take on so! Read what Miss Bessie says, mayhap that ’ill tell you where she’s gone. The gentleman worships the very ground she treads on; and they would have told you, only something about his father, I don’t rightly know what, prevented them. Miss Bessie prayed and begged him yesterday to let her speak to you. He wanted her, right or wrong, to go off with him then, but she wouldn’t; she said she wouldn’t spoil your Christmas Day, not for fifty husbands—she did.”
“You were very fond of Miss Bessie?” Mrs. Dudley said, inquiringly.
“Main fond, ma’am,” answered the girl. “I took to her from the day she talked to me in the field, and give I that harf a crown.”
“Then don’t go chattering about her having gone off with any one, Prissy. If you are fond of her, show your fondness by keeping silence.”
And with that, Mrs. Dudley, first bidding Prissy stay with Lally, in case she wakened, went and roused her husband.
“Arthur,” she said, “Bessie is off—she has eloped. What are we to do?”
“Bessie eloped—Bessie off! Heather, you must be dreaming!”
“I wish I were,” answered his wife. “Is there any use in trying to follow her, do you think?”
“There might be, if we knew where she was gone,” Arthur replied. “What does she say in her letter?” he added, noticing the paper in his wife’s hand.
“She does not give a clue,” said Heather. “She merely states she is gone to be married, and that, whenever her husband allows her, she will write again.”