"Nay, I will not trouble your grandmother, Judith," said he. "I doubt not but that she hath had enough of visitors since you came to stay with her."
"Since I came?" she said, good-naturedly—for she refused to accept the innuendo. "Why, let me consider, now. The day before yesterday my mother walked over to see how we did; and before that—I think the day before that—Mistress Wyse came in to tell us that they had taken a witch at Abbots Morton; and then yesterday Farmer Bowstead called to ask if his strayed horse had been seen anywhere about these lanes. There, now, three visitors since I have come to the cottage: 'tis not a multitude."
"There hath been none other?" said he, looking at her with some surprise.
"Not another foot hath crossed the threshold to my knowledge," said she, simply, and as if it were a matter of small concern.
But this intelligence seemed to produce a very sudden and marked alteration in his manner. Not only would he accompany her into the house, but he immediately became most solicitous about her hand.
"I pray you be careful, Judith," said he, almost as if he would again take hold of her wrist.
"'Tis but a scratch," she said.
"Nay, now, if there be but a touch of rust, it might work mischief," said he, anxiously. "I pray you be careful; and I would bathe it frequently, and keep on the bandage until you are sure that all is well. Nay, I tell you this, Judith: there are more than you think of that would liefer lose a finger than that you should have the smallest hurt."
And in-doors, moreover, he was most amiable and gentle and anxious to please, and bore some rather sharp sayings of the old dame with great good-nature; and whatever Judith said, or suggested, or approved of, that was right, once and for all. She wished to hear more of the riding-whip also. Where was the handle carved? Had her father expressed any desire for such ornamentation?
"Truly 'twas but a small return for his kindness to us the other day," said the young man, who was half bewildered with delight at finding Judith's eyes once more regarding him in the old frank and friendly fashion, and was desperately anxious that they should continue so to regard him (with no chilling shadow of the parson intervening). "For Cornelius Greene being minded to make one or two more catches," he continued—and still addressing those eyes that were at once so gentle and so clear and so kind—"he would have me go to your father and beg him to give us words for these, out of any books he might know of. Not that we thought of asking him to write the words himself—far from that—but to choose them for us; and right willingly he did so. In truth, I have them with me," he added, searching for and producing a paper with some written lines on it. "Shall I read them to you, Judith?"