"Oh, happened!" she cried, annoyed not to pursue the more interesting subject. "Nothing ever happens down Iffley way: at least no more than the old thing as mother is always at me to—marry: and I shouldn't wonder if I did some day, just for a change——"
"And who," said John, with that instant impulse to kick him, which is natural to his kind, "is the happy man?"
"Oh, you know, Mr Rushton. It's Jim Kington, as you've heard before. It's a bit hard," said the girl, with something like a suppressed sob, "after seeing so much of you gentlemen and your ways, to settle down for life with such a common man."
"Would you like, then, to marry—a gentleman?" John said. He did not know why he said it—unthinking, and yet not without a thought—wantonly, because it was dangerous, because he wanted to see what she would say.
"Oh, Mr Rushton!" she said, hanging her head: and suddenly, to his consternation, he felt a timid touch, her hand stealing within his arm.
"It wouldn't be for your good, Mary," he said, with energy. "You don't know what you would have to go through. How would you like to have people looking down upon you, laughing at you behind your back, perhaps mocking you before your face, and all your little faults made a fuss about, and nobody to be at ease with. I don't think you would find it a happy fate."
"If you think I have such bad manners, Mr Rushton! but not when I take pains. I know how to hold my head as high as the best, and give them back as good——And, besides, I am very quick at picking things up, and I'd soon learn——"
"Some things are not so easily learned," said John. "I don't think you'd find it a happy fate."
"Oh, Mr Rushton," she said, again hanging with a little weight upon his arm, holding it close, "why should I mind if he loved me?—I'd be 'appy anywhere, if I never saw a single soul, only to pass my life along of——'im!"
She said "'im," but meant "you," plainer than words could say. And John for a moment stood still, planting his feet on the soil, feeling the whirl catch them, the quickening current, the sweep of a senseless flood: yet conscious to the very core that he did not love the girl—not the very least in the world.