CHAPTER XXVIII.
RENEWALS.
As yet she was all unconscious; and indeed the dulness following her father's departure was for her considerably lightened by this visit to her grandmother's cottage, where she found a hundred duties and occupations awaiting her. She was an expert needle-woman, and there were many arrears in that direction to be made up: she managed the cooking, and introduced one or two cunning dishes, to the wonder of the little Cicely; she even tried her hand at carpentering, where a shelf, or the frame of a casement, had got loose; and as a reward she was occasionally invited to assist her grandmother in the garden. The old dame herself grew wonderfully amiable and cheerful in the constant association with this bright young life; and she had a great store of ballads with which to beguile the tedium of sewing—though, in truth, these were for the most part of a monotonous and mournful character, generally reciting the woes of some poor maiden in Oxfordshire or Lincolnshire who had been deceived by a false lover, and yet was willing to forgive him even as she lay on her death-bed. As for Judith, she took to this quiet life quite naturally and happily; and if she chanced to have time for a stroll along the wooded lanes or through the meadows, she was now right glad that there was no longer any fear of her being confronted by Master Leofric Hope—or Jack Orridge, as he had called himself. Of course she thought of him often, and of his courteous manners, and his eloquent and yet modest eyes, and she hoped all was going well with him, and that she might perchance hear of him through her father. Nor could she forget (for she was but human) that the young man, when disguised as a wizard, had said that he had heard her named as the fairest maid in Warwickshire; and subsequently, in his natural character, that he had heard Ben Jonson speak well of her looks, and she hoped that if ever he recalled these brief interviews, he would consider that she had maintained a sufficiency of maidenly dignity, and had not betrayed the ignorance or awkwardness of a farm-bred wench. Nay, there were certain words of his that she put some store by—as coming from a stranger. For the rest, she was in no case likely to undervalue her appearance: her father had praised her hair, and that was enough.
One morning she had gone down to the little front gate, for some mischievous boys had lifted it off its hinges, and she wanted to get it back again on the rusty iron spikes. But it had got jammed somehow, and would not move; and in her pulling, some splinter of the wood ran into her hand, causing not a little pain. Just at this moment—whether he had come round that way on the chance of catching a glimpse of her, it is hard to say—Tom Quiney came by; but on the other side of the road, and clearly with no intention of calling at the cottage.
"Good-morrow, Judith," said he, in a kind of uncertain way, and would have gone on.
Well, she was vexed and impatient with her fruitless efforts, and her hand smarted not a little; so she looked at him and said, half angrily,
"I wish you would come and lift this gate."
It was but a trifling task for the tall and straight-limbed young fellow who now strode across the highway. He jerked it up in a second, and then set it down again on the iron spikes, where it swung in its wonted way.
"But your hand is bleeding, Judith!" he exclaimed.
"'Tis nothing," she said. "It was a splinter. I have pulled it out."