The natives of this part are rough in manner, and apt to regard civility as the same thing with servility. Their bluntness does not proceed from thickness, as in the south of England, but from a surety of their own worth, and inferiority to no one. And to deal with them rightly, this must be entered into.
Sally o' Will o' the Wallhead bobbed her solid and black curly head, with a clout like a jelly on the poll of it, to the owner of their land, and a lady of high birth; but she vouchsafed no courtesy, neither did Mistress Yordas expect one. But the active and self-contained woman set a chair in the low dark room, which was their best, and stood waiting to be spoken to.
“Sally,” said the lady, who also possessed the Yorkshire gift of going to the point, “you had a man ten years ago; you behaved badly to him, and he went into the Indian Company.”
“A' deed,” replied the maiden, without any blush, because she had been in the right throughout; “and noo a' hath coom in a better moind.”
“And you have come to know your own mind about him. You have been steadfast to him for ten years. He has saved up some money, and is come back to marry you.”
“I heed nane o' the brass. But my Jack is back again.”
“His father held under us for many years. He was a thoroughly honest man, and paid his rent as often as he could. Would Jack like to have his father's farm? It has been let to his cousin, as you know; but they have been going from bad to worse; and everything must be sold off, unless I stop it.”
Sally was of dark Lancastrian race, with handsome features and fine brown eyes. She had been a beauty ten years ago, and could still look comely, when her heart was up.
“My lady,” she said, with her heart up now, at the hope of soon having a home of her own, and something to work for that she might keep, “such words should not pass the mouth wi'out bin meant.”
What she said was very different in sound, and not to be rendered in echo by any one born far away from that country, where three dialects meet and find it hard to guess what each of the others is up to. Enough that this is what Sally meant to say, and that Mistress Yordas understood it.