“What's come over little Liza?” said a young dalesman, who, in the solemnity of Sunday apparel, was wending his way thither, as the little woman flew past him, “tearing,” as he said, “like a crazy thing.”
“Some barn to be christened afore the service, Liza?” called another young dalesman after her, with the memory of the girl's enjoyment of a similar ceremony not long before.
Liza heeded neither the questions nor the banter. Her destination was certainly not the church, but she ran with greater speed in that direction than the love of the Reverend Nicholas's ministrations had yet prompted her to compass.
The village was reached at length, and her father's house was near at hand; but the girl ran on, without stopping to exchange a word with her sententious parent, who stood in the porch, pipe in hand, and clad in those “Cheppel Sunday” garments with which, we fear, the sanctuary was rarely graced.
“Why, theer's Liza,” said Matthew, turning his head into the house to speak to his wife, who sat within; “flying ower the road like a mad greyhound.”
Mrs. Branthwaite had been peeling apples towards the family's one great dinner in the week. Putting down the bowl which contained them, she stepped to the door and looked after her daughter's vanishing figure.
“Sure enough, it is,” she said. “Whatever's amiss? The lass went over to the Moss. Why, she stopping, isn't she?” “Ey, at the Lion,” answered Mattha. “I reckon there's summat wrang agen with that Robbie. I'll just slip away and see.”
Panting and heated on this winter's day, red up to the roots of the hair and down to the nape of the neck, Liza had come to a full pause at the door of the village inn. It was not a false instinct that had led the girl to choose this destination. Sunday as it was, the young man whom she sought was there, and, morning though it might be, he was already in that condition of partial inebriation which Liza had recognized as the sign of a facetious mood.
Opening the door with a disdainful push, compounded partly of her contempt for the place and partly of the irritation occasioned by the events that had brought her to the degradation of calling there, Liza cried out, as well as she could in her present breathless condition,—
“Robbie, come your ways out of this.”