By M.E. Francis
The late spring dusk had at length fallen; the horses had been led home from the plough, which remained in characteristic Dorset fashion at the angle of the last furrow, the merciful twilight hiding the rich coating of rust with which a lengthy course of such treatment had endued it; the elder labourers had donned their coats, and lit their pipes, and gone sauntering homewards along the dewy grass border of the lane. Farmer Bellamy had laid aside his pinner—the last cow having long been milked and sent pasturewards in the rear of her fellows—and likewise smoked ruminatively in the chimney corner; his wife faced him, a large basket at her feet containing sundry arrears of mending, a sock upon her outspread left hand, a needle threaded with coarse yarn in the other. It was getting too dark to darn now, and she wondered impatiently why Alice and Lizzie did not come in to light the lamp and do their share of needlework.
But Mrs Bellamy’s daughters formed part of a little group of men and girls who had gathered round the low stone wall at the extremity of the yard; the central point of interest being a certain flat-topped gatepost which marked off the entrance to a disused pig-sty. Lizzie Bellamy was bending over this, her face in close proximity to the paper on which she was writing, her eyes strained in the endeavour to make the most of such light as yet remained. A boy, standing near her, held, at a convenient angle, a penny ink-bottle which he obligingly tilted each time that she required to dip her pen; occasionally in Lizzie’s increasing excitement, the pen missed its mark, whereupon he seized it in his stumpy fingers and guided it to its rightful destination.
Little spasmodic bursts of laughter escaped the writer every now and then, and a kind of smothered chorus of giggles was kept up by the bystanders; while from time to time one of the more adventurous squinted over her shoulder, being admonished in return by a vigorous dig from the girl’s elbow.
At last she threw back her head and dropped her pen with a laughing exclamation—
“I d’ ’low that’ll do.”
“Read it, read it!” cried the others.
“Somebody’ll have to light a match, then,” retorted she.
Jem Frisby produced one, struck it on the wall, and stepped forward.
The light fell on the girl’s face—a good-looking one enough, of the dark-eyed, red-cheeked Dorset type—and illuminated now one, now another, of her companions. All these faces were young, all bore the same expression of expectant, mischievous glee.
“‘My Dear Giles,’” read Lizzie, “‘I take up my pen to write these few lines to let you know a wish what’s long been in my mind—”
“I d’ ’low it ’ud be better if ye did put ‘What’s been in my mind since the death o’ Missus Neale,’” suggested a tall lad, with a smothered roar of laughter.
“No, ’twouldn’t do at all,” said Lizzie. “It ’ud put him in mind o’ the poor body, and he’d be that down-hearted he wouldn’t have no fancy for cwortin’ Hannah. Keep quiet, else I can’t read. There, the match be out now; ’tis your fault.”
“Let the maid alone till she’ve a-read us what she’ve a-wrote,” growled somebody from the darkness, which seemed intense now that the little flickering light had vanished. Jem struck another match, and Lizzie continued, reading quickly—
“‘You must find it terr’ble hard to manage without no missus; an’ I’m beginning to feel lonesome now I be gettin’ into years—’”
“I d’ ’low that’ll sp’ile her chances!” exclaimed someone in the background. Lizzie twisted her head round angrily:
“Nothin’ o’ the kind; Giles ’ud never look at nobody without it were a staid ’ooman. Second match is near out now. I won’t be bothered readin’ the letter to ye at all if ye keep on a-interruptin’ of I. Well—
“‘I’ve been a-thinkin’ we might do worse nor make a match. I could do for you, and you’d be company for I. Besides’—here Lizzie’s voice quavered with laughter—‘I’ve took a mortal fancy to you, Giles, an’ think you the handsomest man ever I see. My heart have been yours two year an’ more. If you think well on the notion you might meet me to-morrow in the Little Wood at breakfast time.—Yours truly,
“Hannah Pethin.
“‘P.S.—As I’m feelin’ a bit timid along o’ writin’ this here letter, I’d be obliged if ye’d kindly not mention it when we meets face to face.’”
The match had burnt itself out a moment or two previously, but Lizzie remembered her composition sufficiently well to recite it without such aid, and was rewarded for the effort by shouts of approving laughter.
“The very thing!” exclaimed one.
“The last touch is the best!” cried another; while all united in declaring the letter to be “jist about clever.”
“I’ll pop it under his door late to-night!” cried Jem. “So soon as I’m sure he be asleep. Now, let’s write his to her.”
“You’d better do that,” said Lizzie. “The two writin’s mustn’t be the same, an’ she’d know my hand along o’ my makin’ out the milk bills.”
“Hold the match, then, somebody,” cried Jem. “Here, ’Ector, catch hold; an’ mind ye keep it studdy. Give me the pen, Liz.”
He took up his position at the flat stone, and was so long in squaring his elbows, arranging the pen in his clumsy fingers, and thrusting his tongue into his cheek—a necessary preliminary to rustic letter writing—that Hector announced that the match was burning him, before he had begun work in earnest.
“Hold hard a minute!” cried another man. “Best be thinkin’ out what you want to say afore we lights another. It comes terr’ble expensive on matches, an’ it’s enough to put anybody off to have to start to light one in the middle of a line.”
“True, true!” agreed the others.
Lizzie, flushed with her recent triumph, again took the lead—
“‘Dear Hannah—’”
“Best put ‘Miss Pethin’” suggested Rose Gillingham, one of the dairymaids.
“He do never call her anything but Hannah,” retorted Lizzie; “an’ they’ve been workin’ together now for nigh upon ten year.”
“That’s the very reason she’ll think he’s more in earnest-like; she’ll be terr’ble pleased if he treats her so respectful.”
There was something in that, the others agreed, and even Lizzie gave way, and it was decided that the amorous document should begin after the somewhat distant fashion suggested by Rose.
“Well now,” resumed Lizzie—“‘I write these few lines to say as I’ve been a-turnin’ over somethin’ in my mind, as I hope you’ll be glad to hear. Bein’ a widow-man, I feels mysel’ by times at a terr’ble loss, an’ I be wishful to take a second—’”
“Bain’t that comin’ to the p’int a bit too quick?” interrupted Rose.
“Lord, no!” interpolated Jem very quickly. “Mercy me, it’ll take I all my time to get that much in. We have but the one sheet of paper, look see; an’ there’ll be a deal o’ writin’ in what ye’ve thought on a’ready.”
“‘There’s nobody,’” went on Lizzie, disregarding both disputants, “‘my dear Miss Pethin, what I could like better to fill the empty post nor yourself—’”
“I never knowed a post could be empty,” said some facetious bystander, who was, however, nudged and hushed into silence.
“‘I do think you the vittiest maid in the whole o’ Dorset,’” pursued the intrepid author, being unable, however, to proceed with her composition for some moments, owing to the storm of ironical applause; for, indeed, the destined recipient of this tender document was not only “a staid ’ooman,” but had never, at any period of her life, possessed any claim to good looks.
“‘If ye think well on my offer, will ye meet I at the Little Wood at breakfast-time to-morrow? But, as I’m a shy man by natur’, I’d thank ye not to say nothin’ about me havin’ wrote to ye.
“‘Your true and faithful,
“‘Giles Neale.’”
When the hubbub of applause had subsided, a match was duly lighted, and Jem set to work. His task concluded, after much labour and consequent burning of matches, the document was read aloud, directed, and handed over to Lizzie, who undertook to slip it under Hannah’s door before retiring to rest herself.
“If she do say anythin’ to I about it, I’ll tell her I did hear a man’s foot goin’ through the cheese-room very late,” she added, giggling.
“Well, then, us’ll all post ourselves behind the hedge at back o’ the Little Wood,” cried Rose, jubilantly; “an’ then us’ll all run out an’ call ‘April Fools!’ so soon as they’ve a-made it up.”
“’Ees,” agreed Lizzie, “but don’t you sp’ile sport by runnin’ out too soon. Best wait till brewery whooter goes, an’ then all run out together—that’s the ticket.”
The resolution was carried unanimously, and the party separated for the night. The female section made its way towards the farmhouse, for the two milkmaids employed by Farmer Bellamy in addition to his own stalwart daughters, lodged on the premises; while the men and boys betook themselves to the little cluster of houses, a kind of off-shoot from the village proper, in which they had their homes.
Hannah Pethin was usually the first of that busy household to awake, and it was her duty to call her less alert companions. When, on the morning of this momentous first of April, she jumped out of bed, she stood for a moment or two rubbing her eyes and staring. There, in the centre of the very small patch of boarded floor which intervened between her bed and the door, lay a large white envelope, which bore her name in bold characters—
“Miss Hannah Pethin.”
“’Tis for me,” she said to herself, after gazing at this object for a minute or two. It generally took Hannah some little time to grasp an idea, but this one presented itself in a concrete form. “Dear, to be sure, I wonder what anyone can be writin’ to me for?”
She had pulled on her stout knitted stockings, and assumed the greater part of her underwear, before it occurred to her to open the letter and ascertain its contents. Even then she grasped the paper with a diffident finger and thumb, and turned it over and over before she could make up her mind to embark on its perusal.
“Dear!” she exclaimed, looking at the end in true feminine fashion, “’Tis from Giles!”
Her eyes opened wider and wider as she read the line which preceded the signature. “Your true and faithful.” She turned over the page, the colour deepening in a countenance already ruddy as the brick floor of the milk-house which she so frequently scrubbed.
“Well!” she ejaculated at last, drawing a long breath, “’Tis a offer—that’s what it be! Who’d ha’ thought o’ me gettin’ a offer!”
She mused for a little time, her face wreathed in smiles, and spelt over the letter again with increasing satisfaction.
“‘Meet I at the Little Wood at breakfast-time to-morrow’—that’s to-day.” Hannah’s wits were brightening under the influence of this unexpected stroke of good fortune. “‘I’d thank ye not to say nothin’ about me havin’ wrote.’. . . Well, an’ that’s well thought on. I d’ ’low I be jist so shy as he, an’ it ’ud ha’ been terr’ble arkward to ha’ talked about sich a letter as this here. . . . ‘I be wishful to take a second’—well, the man couldn’t speak plainer. . . . ‘The vittiest maid!’ Fancy him sayin’ that!”
At this period of her meditations Hannah was constrained to cross the room on tip-toe to the window, near which a small square looking-glass was suspended from a nail. She surveyed her own image with some curiosity but no little satisfaction, as with Giles’s eyes; regretted that her hair was growing grey about the temples, but consoled herself with the fact that it was still abundant and curly, and finally smiled broadly to herself.
“I d’ ’low if I do for him it’s all right!”
Suddenly she recollected with a start that if she was to be at the tryst at the hour named, she would have to get through her intervening labours with more than usual celerity.
A few minutes later a whirlwind-like form burst into the room where Lizzie and Alice Bellamy still lay, wrapped in slumber.
“Get up, ’tis past the time, an’ there’s a deal to be done.”
Lizzie sat up, at first very cross, but recovering good humour as recollection came with increasing consciousness.
“Here, Hannah, wait a bit, what be in sich a stew for?” She poked Alice, who still lay under the blankets, with her elbow. “Have anythin’ strange happened? You do look so queer—an’ I do declare you’ve a-made yourself quite smart.”
“Nonsense, nonsense!” responded Hannah quickly, “What could ha’ happened at this time o’ marnin’? I be in a hurry to get forward wi’ my work, that’s all!”
“Oh, is that all? We slept a bit late, Alice an’ me, along o’ bein’ disturbed by hearin’ a man’s steps i’ the cheese-room late last night; did you chance to hear ’em?”
She poked the sleepy Alice again, and even through her half-closed lids that damsel perceived the conscious expression which overspread poor Hannah’s face. Before they had time, however, to ply her with further queries the latter had fled from the room, and after a vigorous thump or two on the door of the room shared by her fellow milkmaids, and a more respectful summons to the farmer and his wife, went hammering downstairs in her hobnailed boots to begin her work.
“She bain’t a-goin’ to be late at the meetin’ place ye mid be sure!” cried Lizzie, and Alice roused herself sufficiently to chuckle.
The feverish zeal with which Hannah subsequently applied herself to her various duties astonished her mistress, who was wont to consider her unduly slow of a morning. This zeal, however, seemed to be shared by the other occupants of the farmhouse—no one who was in the secret wanted to be late; everyone was determined to arrive at the Little Wood in time to witness the meeting of the unconscious couple. At breakfast-time, therefore, the yard was practically deserted, and the plotters were safely ensconsed behind the thick quickset hedge which bounded the little copse, and commanded a good view of the gap through which the lovers must enter.
“I knowed she’d be first!” cried Lizzie, with a giggle, as Hannah’s square figure came in sight.
“She’ve a-got a red ribbon under her collar,” whispered Alice, “Look how she’ve a-done herself up! She’ve curled her hair I d’ ’low.”
“No, no, her hair curls na’trel. Giles ’ull think hisself in luck,” cried Jem, with a wink. “There, I’ve half a mind to try and cut en out if he don’t turn up soon. She be a vitty maid, jist about!”
“‘The vittiest maid in the whole o’ Darset!’” quoted his neighbour.
Meanwhile Hannah slowly approached, a maidenly shyness checking her too eager feet. It would be more seemly for Giles to be there before her, she had thought, and she had not started till five minutes past eight by the cuckoo clock. He was probably already in the wood, looking at her. She reddened at the thought and tripped in the long grass, recovering herself with an awkward lurch. But there was a bright colour in her cheeks, and a pleasantly expectant light in her eyes, perceiving which, the onlookers nudged each other.
Passing through the gap Hannah gave one quick glance round, and finding that Giles was not there, stood for a moment with a look of blank disappointment, then, as the church clock struck eight she smiled to herself.
“I d’ ’low farm clock be fast,” she remarked aloud, and forthwith, deeming herself to be alone, devoted herself to the improvement of her appearance. She shook out her skirts, took off and retied the bow of red ribbon; passed the loosened locks about her brow round her toil-worn finger, and finally, shading her eyes with her hand, gazed somewhat anxiously in the direction of the village.
“Here he be!” whispered Jem all at once. He had crawled a little way on his stomach in order to obtain a better view.
Hannah, perceiving Giles at the same moment, modestly withdrew from the gap, and sitting down at the foot of a twisted thorn-tree began nervously to pluck and chew the scarcely unfolded leaves of wood sorrel which grew beneath it. The heavy tread drew nearer, and presently Giles’ figure appeared in the gap.
Hannah looked up bashfully, a tentative smile hovering about her lips. Giles smiled too, very broadly, and stood contemplating her so long that the interested waiters craned their heads in the endeavour to ascertain the cause of the silence.
“He be jist a-lookin’ at her,” muttered Alice.
“An’ she be a lookin’ up at he this way,” responded Lizzie, with a leer which was a malicious exaggeration of poor Hannah’s uncertain smile.
“So you be a-settin’ on the ground?” hazarded Giles at last.
He squeezed himself through the gap and came a step nearer. He was a thick-set man, with a broad, good-humoured, stupid face, which was now all creased and puckered with an odd expression that partook as much of anxiety as pleasure.
“Bain’t ye afeared o’ catchin’ cold?” he pursued, illuminated by a sudden idea.
“I’ll get up if you like,” stammered Hannah.
“Nay now,” said Giles, “I don’t know as I would.”
He grinned till his eyes positively disappeared as he lowered himself to the ground beside her.
“How’s that?” he enquired.
Hannah was at a loss to answer, and, after a moment’s pause, he thrust his hand into his pocket and drew out a large hunch of bread and cheese
“Best make the most of our time,” he remarked. “We’m ploughin’ to-day. Hain’t you brought your breakfast?” he asked, pausing in the midst of mastication.
“I didn’t think about breakfast,” faltered Hannah.
“Didn’t ye now?” said Giles.
He looked reflectively at his portion, and then, apparently deciding that there was only enough for one, continued to dispose of it, albeit with an uneasy and apologetic air. The silence that ensued was so long that the onlookers began to exchange glances somewhat blankly. It would be dull if Giles merely ate his breakfast while Hannah sat by—that was an everyday occurrence. Presently, however, Hannah took the initiative.
“Mr Neale,” she said, “did you want to speak to me?”
Giles, with a large lump of bread in his cheek, turned upon her a glance that was half alarmed and half humorous.
“Well, I be come,” he said. “B’ain’t that enough? Deeds an’ not words is my motto.”
“Well, an’ I be come,” said Hannah, with some spirit. “I be come because I did think ye mid ha’ summat to say to I.”
Giles looked at her knowingly, and remarked with a meaning jerk of his head—
“I d’ ’low us do understand each other.”
Hannah, pleased but still uncertain, laughed feebly, and began to pleat the hem of her immaculate white apron.
“I didn’t never expect nobody to be carryin’ on about my bein’ a vitty maid,” she said presently, in a low voice—not so low, however, but that she was overheard by the delighted spies.
“No,” agreed Giles heartily. “Ye wouldn’t be like to expect that—no, sure.”
Hannah was taken aback for the moment, but remembering Giles’ shyness, thought his unwillingness to pursue the complimentary vein which had so much astonished her in his letter, was due to that, and forebore to be offended.
“’Tis true ye must feel yerself by times at a terr’ble loss,” she continued after a pause.
Giles reflected—
“Well, I haven’t got on so bad so far,” he observed. “Nay, I haven’t got on so bad. But I don’t say—” here he gulped down a huge morsel and his natural timidity at the same time. “But I don’t say as I shouldn’t get on better wi’ a ’ooman to do for me. I don’t say as I shouldn’t. I can’t say no fairer than that.”
He paused, and then, with a leer that was distinctly amorous, edged himself a little nearer to her. “Seein’ as some folks as needn’t be mentioned have a-took a fancy to I—”
“Lard, Mr Neale,” interrupted Hannah coyly. “Whatever did put sich a notion into your head?”
Again Giles fixed his twinkling eyes upon her with a glance that was unutterably knowing, and returned—
“Ye wouldn’t be here if ye hadn’t, would ye now?”
Hannah gave an assenting giggle, and Giles, after a moment’s hesitation, put his arm round her waist, repeating exultantly:
“Would ye now? Not that I ever set up to be a handsome man, ye know,” he added more seriously.
“Handsome is as handsome does,” exclaimed Hannah, in so heart-whole a fashion that Giles did not ask himself if the compliment were somewhat left-handed.
“Well, if your ’eart’s mine, that’s enough,” went on Giles, after an interval devoted to conscientious endeavours to recall the exact wording of the portentous letter. “I’m willin’—there, ye have it plain. I’m willin’.”
“Well,” said Hannah, “I’m sure I’m very thankful to ye, Giles. I be proud to think as I be your ch’ice, an’ I’ll do my very best for to make ye comfortable an’ happy.”
Giles, pleasantly conscious that this courtship, unlooked for though it might have been, was progressing on lines that were eminently orthodox and satisfactory, eyed her approvingly for some moments, and then, with a burst of enthusiasm, tightened his grip of her solid waist, and exclaimed—
“I d’ ’low I be ’appy an’ comfortable now.”
During the subsequent pause Jem Frisby thrust his sunburnt face between the catkin-tipped willow saplings which protruded from his corner of the hedge, and almost choked with laughter as he announced—
“They be a-kissin’ of each other!”
The middle-aged lovers sat on for some time in extreme enjoyment of the situation. The spring sunshine fell across their knees and their sturdy clasped hands; the birds sang over their heads, the twisted boughs of the old thorn waved in the light breeze, the leaf-buds, already green though not yet unfolded, flashing like jewels in the light. The bank beneath the hedge was gay with celandines, and the air was sweet with the scent of primroses, with which the place was carpeted, though few of the flowers were yet in full bloom.
Giles and Hannah were scarcely conscious of their surroundings, yet in some indefinite way these added to their blissful state. Just as Giles, with that twinkle in his eyes which heralded, as Hannah had perceived, some particularly ardent speech, had nudged her meaningly and enquired “What about bein’ called home,” the church clock struck nine, and at the same time the blare of the brewery “whooter” fell upon their ears. Simultaneously with these sounds, others, even more discordant than the hooter startled the pair, who scrambled to their feet in time to see a row of gesticulating figures surmounted by grinning faces, spring up from behind the hedge, which they had believed to shelter them.
“April fools, haw, haw!” . . . “I d’ ’low ye be a proper pair on ’em!”
“April fool, Hannah! Giles, ye be an April fool!”
“We took in the pair o’ ye nicely!”
This was the chorus which greeted their bewildered ears, interspersed with shouts of laughter, while fingers were pointed and heads were shaken waggishly. Giles was the first to recover his self-possession.
“What be the meanin’ o’ this?” he enquired angrily. “It’s too bad if a man can’t step out to have a quiet word wi’ a ’ooman!”
“More particular when the ’ooman’s took sich a mortal fancy to ’en!” interpolated Lizzie, holding her sides.
“Yes,” cried Alice, quick to take up her cue. “Why, Hannah’s heart have a-been yours two year an’ more. I’m sure I don’t wonder at it,” she added, “Sich a ’andsome man as you be.”
“Who’s been a-tellin’ ye about that?” growled Giles, turning very red.
“Ask Hannah!” ejaculated Lizzie, in a voice that was scarcely articulate for laughter. “Ask the vittiest maid in the whole o’ Darset.”
“Giles,” exclaimed Hannah tremulously, “somebody must ha’ read your letter to me.”
The jeers and laughter redoubled, and Jem exclaimed triumphantly—
“Somebody read it, an’ somebody wrote it!”
“Wasn’t it Giles?” faltered Hannah, turning pale beneath her tan, and beginning to tremble violently. Some instinct of womanly compassion suddenly sobered Alice. Pushing through the hedge she made her way to Hannah’s side.
“’Twas but a joke, my dear,” she explained somewhat shamefacedly. “There, ’tis the first of April, ye see, an’ we jist thought we’d play ye a bit of trick. ’Twas made up jist for fun. We wrote Giles a letter in your name asking him to meet ye here an’ sayin’—sayin’—”
“What did ye say?” interrupted Hannah, the colour rushing back to her shamed, distressed face. “Oh, Mr Neale, you thought it was me. I’d never ha’ wrote no letter, I’d never ha’ been so bold. I—I wouldn’t ha’ come here wi’out I thought ’twas you as axed me. I had a letter this marnin’ signed in your name. I thought ’twas from you—I thought—” Breaking off suddenly she raised her apron to her eyes.
Giles made a step towards her, pushed Alice roughly on one side, and jerked the apron down.
“Give over cryin’,” he exclaimed gruffly. “Let’s get at the rights o’ this. I must have a look at that there letter—give it to me.”
“Oh, I’d never have the face,” Hannah was beginning when he silenced her with the reiterated command in a raised voice—
“Give it to me, I say! I’ll ha’ the rights o’ this—dalled if I don’t!”
Very reluctantly Hannah drew the fateful missive from her bosom, a suppressed titter once more breaking the silence which had reigned since the jest had threatened to take a serious turn. Giles unfolded the letter, read it slowly, and then, with an impassive face, handed it back to its original recipient.
“You can keep it,” he remarked. “It’s my letter right enough.”
“Well, that is a good ’un!” exclaimed the irrepressible Jem.
Giles glowered round at him.
“It’s my letter,” he repeated doggedly. “It’s my name what’s signed at the end, an’ every word what’s in it be mine.”
“Giles!” exclaimed Hannah, almost inarticulately. Giles turned majestically towards her.
“It’s right, I tell ’ee,” he said firmly. “I’m not a great hand at letter-writin’, an’ as like as not if I’d ha’ tried for to put down what be in my mind I shouldn’t ha’ done it so clever. I’m much obliged to you, neighbours,” he added, raising his voice, and looking triumphantly round at the astonished faces. Then, with a sudden shout of laughter he exclaimed—
“Who’s April fools now?”
“Well, there, I’ll say you have the best o’ it, Giles,” said somebody good-humouredly. “I be right down glad the matter be going to end this way.”
“Thank ye,” said Giles.
“We be to wish ye j’y, be we?” said Lizzie, with a scarcely perceptible toss of her head.
“I d’ ’low ye be,” he affirmed gravely.
“Well, I be pure glad, Hannah, my dear, I’m sure,” said Alice, smiling doubtfully at Hannah as she backed through the hedge.
Hannah made no response; she, too, was looking doubtful, almost piteous, as she gazed at Giles’ unmoved countenance.
The company filed away, feeling somewhat flat; the joke had unaccountably missed fire. Jem, who was the last to pass through the gap, made a final attempt to put Giles out of countenance.
“’Tis easy seen you be a man o’ taste, Giles,” he called out. “She be the vittiest maid in the whole o’ Darset, bain’t she?”
“She be,” assented Giles with fervour, “jist about.”
He strode towards the hedge, and stood watching the somewhat depressed-looking little procession which filed across the field. When it had disappeared behind the big hayrick at the corner, he turned to Hannah. She had again thrown her apron over her head, and was weeping behind it. He went towards her and pulled it down—very gently this time.
“We have the best of it, I think,” he observed.
“Oh, Giles,” sobbed she. “You must think—oh, I don’t know what you must think!”
“I do think what’s wrote in my letter,” said Giles.
“Nay now, you couldn’t,” said Hannah, but there was an unconscious appeal in her voice. “You couldn’t ever think I was a vitty maid.”
“Well, don’t you think I be a ’andsome man, my dear?” cried Giles, advancing, his broad face beaming with good-humoured smiles towards her.
“I do, indeed I do,” cried Hannah with eager enthusiasm. “There, I do think ye be the handsomest and nicest man ever I did see. Handsome is as handsome does. An’ I d’ ’low you’ve acted handsome.”
“Well, if you think so, I’m satisfied,” responded Giles; then, after a pause, he added with his most knowing twinkle—
“Since we agree so well I d’ ’low we mid jist so well fall over pulpit at once.”
