“You’ve got him to care for ’ee a bit, ’nation if you han’t!” murmured Anny judicially. “It’s well to be you!”
In a few moments Arabella replied in a curiously low, hungry tone of latent sensuousness: “I’ve got him to care for me: yes! But I want him to more than care for me; I want him to have me—to marry me! I must have him. I can’t do without him. He’s the sort of man I long for. I shall go mad if I can’t give myself to him altogether! I felt I should when I first saw him!”
“As he is a romancing, straightfor’ard, honest chap, he’s to be had, and as a husband, if you set about catching him in the right way.”
Arabella remained thinking awhile. “What med be the right way?” she asked.
“Oh you don’t know—you don’t!” said Sarah, the third girl.
“On my word I don’t!—No further, that is, than by plain courting, and taking care he don’t go too far!”
The third girl looked at the second. “She don’t know!”
“’Tis clear she don’t!” said Anny.
“And having lived in a town, too, as one may say! Well, we can teach ’ee som’at then, as well as you us.”
“Yes. And how do you mean—a sure way to gain a man? Take me for an innocent, and have done wi’ it!”