"'That does not matter in the least, if I like the place in other ways,' I said to her."
"He must be very good-looking!" interjected Nance.
"So I told her I would like to see the children. She went up to call them, and presently down they came—a girl of six and a little boy of four. They had been having a rough-and-tumble, and their hair was all about their faces. So in a little we were great friends. They went up to the nursery with their grandmother, and I was following more slowly, when all at once, Harry—I mean the young man—came hurrying in, carrying a tray. He had an apron tied about him, and the bottom hem of it was tucked into the string at the waist. As soon as he saw me he blushed, and nearly dropped the tray he was carrying. I think he expected me to laugh, but I did not——"
"Of course not," coincided Nance, with decision.
"I just opened the top drawer in the sideboard and took out the cloth and spread it, while he stood with the tray still in his arms, not knowing, in his surprise, what to do with it.
"'I thought you had gone upstairs with my mother,' he said. 'Old John Hearseman is out on the hill with the lambs, and we have no other servants except the children's little nurse.'
"And so—and so," said the Hempie, falteringly, "that is how it began."
I could hear a little scuffle—which, being interpreted, meant that Nance had dropped her workbasket and sewing on the floor in a heap and had clasped her sister in her arms.
"Darling, cry all you want to!" My heart would know that tone through six feet of kirkyard mould—aye, and leap to answer it.
"I am not crying—I don't want to cry." It was the Hempie's voice, but I had never heard it sound like that before. Then it took a stronger tone, with little pauses where the tears were wiped away.