In the morning she rose early and went down to the kitchen to light the fire, for she had lately made a practice of this, being glad to do anything to help the toll-keeper’s wife. As she laid the wood she thought of the letter waiting to be answered. Morning had almost brought the decision to say “No.” Everything seemed less formidable in the daylight, and sleep had steadied her nerves and cleared away the spectres of the darkness; it was not until she had sat down in the attic, pen in hand, to renounce the haven held open for her that she wavered. While she hesitated the boy knocked at the door below, and standing at the turning-point of her way, Mary’s heart failed her.
She wanted time. In a few minutes she had got no nearer to her decision, and the messenger waiting in the road began to kick the doorstep impatiently. She tore the sheet of paper in half, and wrote on the blank part of it.
“Dear George Williams, i dont know what to do i cant say yes nor no. i know you are a good man and many thanks. forgive me i mean to do rite i will send the anser to Crishowell on market day your obliged friend
“MARY VAUGHAN.”
She had received a little education, and had taught herself a good deal during her intimacy with Rhys, spending many evenings in attempts to improve in reading and writing. What puzzled her most in the present case was how to address her suitor, and, more than all, how to subscribe herself. She wondered, as she watched the boy’s back retreating towards Crishowell, whether she had done so rightly. He was her friend, she told herself, and she was obliged indeed.
On market day George prepared to go down to the toll and hear his fate. His objection to letting his messenger come to the cottage was his reason for this, and not any excitement brought on by the occasion. He was no hot-headed lad rushing off to his sweetheart; he was a man with whom life had gone wrong, so wrong as to have given him a very present determination to prevent another life from sliding down the hill into that slough which had all but swallowed up his own. He was struggling in it yet, and he could not hope to set his feet on firm ground for some time to come. But when that day should arrive, and he could begin to toil up the slope again, he meant to tow up an extra burden with him. He felt himself strong and hard and patient, and he liked to think that his strength and hardness and patience might do for two.
In spite of the absence of romance in his wooing, he determined that no outward sign of it should be missing from his errand—he felt it to be due to Mary. The butterfly, whose wings had been scorched by the fires of life, should be pursued with nets and lures as though it were the most gaudy and unattainable of winged creatures. For this reason his best suit of working-clothes (he possessed no Sunday ones) had been carefully brushed over-night, and his boots cleaned. He ducked his head into the water-bucket and scrubbed it with his coarse towel, flattening and smoothing his hair before the scrap of looking-glass till it shone. He shaved himself with great care, and trimmed the two inches of whisker, which made lines in front of his ears, until they became mere shadings, and then took from some hidden lair, in which he kept such things, a purple neckcloth with white bird’s-eye spots on it. This he tied with infinite care. As he was dusting his hat he looked up, to see Rhys standing in the doorway of the partition; he had been so much occupied with his dressing that he had not heard him come up the ladder. He turned very red. Walters was smiling contemptuously. “You’re very fine this morning,” he said, with his eye resting on a patch just below George’s knee, “I suppose you’re going courting.”
Williams took up the rabbit-headed stick, and for answer unlocked and opened the door which had its key always turned as a protective measure when there was the chance of Rhys coming up-stairs.
Before shutting it he dropped the key into his pocket.