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.