‘Well, well, we will deal, my girl, you may depend on’t. But tell me now, were I to give you a letter, what would you do to get it forward?’
‘Why, put it into Squire’s own bag that hangs in hall,’ answered poor Dorcas. ‘What else could I do? He sends it to Brampton, or to Carloisle, or where it pleases him, once a week, and that gate.’
‘Ah!’ said I; ‘and I suppose your sweetheart John carries it?’
‘Noa—disn’t now—and Jan is no sweetheart of mine, ever since he danced at his mother’s feast with Kitty Rutlege, and let me sit still; that a did.’
‘It was most abominable in Jan, and what I could never have thought of him,’ I replied.
‘Oh, but a did though—a let me sit still on my seat, a did.’
‘Well, well, my pretty May, you will get a handsomer fellow than Jan—Jan’s not the fellow for you, I see that.’
‘Noa, noa,’ answered the damsel; ‘but he is weel aneugh for a’ that, mon. But I carena a button for him; for there is the miller’s son, that suitored me last Appleby Fair, when I went wi’ oncle, is a gway canny lad as you will see in the sunshine.’
‘Aye, a fine stout fellow. Do you think he would carry my letter to Carlisle?’
‘To Carloisle! ‘Twould be all his life is worth; he maun wait on clap and hopper, as they say. Odd, his father would brain him if he went to Carloisle, bating to wrestling for the belt, or sic loike. But I ha’ more bachelors than him; there is the schoolmaster, can write almaist as weel as tou canst, mon.’