"She warn't here after she had gone away," said Miss Collins; "and that was jes' the time when I knowed all about it. I knowed about other people too."
That was also the time after Evan had quitted Pleasant Valley. Yet
Diana did not know why she could not keep herself from trembling. If
Evan had written, then, this Jemima Collins and her employer, Miss
Gunn, would have known it and drawn their conclusions. Well, they had
no data to go upon now.
"Bring me a little saucepan, Jemima, will you?"
Jemima brought it. Now her mistress (but she never called her so) would be away and off in a minute or two more, and leave her to watch the saucepan, she knew, and her opportunity would be over. Still she waited to choose her words.
"You ain't so fond o' life as I be," she observed.
"Perhaps not," said Diana. "I do not think I should like a situation in the post office."
"But I should ha' thought you'd ha' liked to go all over the world and see everything. Now Pleasant Valley seems to me something like a corner. Why didn't you?"
"Why didn't I what?" said Diana, standing up. She had been stooping down over her saucepan, which now sat upon a little bed of coals.
"La! you needn't look at me like that," said Miss Collins, chuckling. "It's no harm. You had your ch'ice, and you chose it; only I would have took the other."
"The other what? What would you have taken?"