he was young yet, and should have been too well-mannered not to throw a
civil word to a pretty girl. But some said he had been disappointed in
love, and had sworn never to look at woman more.
“What, never a letter for me?” cried the foremost of the girls, planting
herself full in his path as he went by. “I’m sure I don’t know what
you’re a postman for, Mr. Frewin, for it don’t seem to me as if ye ever
had nothing to carry!”
She planted her arms akimbo and laughed in his face, her own a blaze of
sweet merriment, too pretty to be bold, and too frank and sincere to be
anything but captivating.
But Ben Frewin neither answered nor looked up, and the girl drew back
baffled, but no wit discomposed, as he strode past her.
“Not a bit of it, ye’ll never do it, Letty,” laughed another of the
girls, and the young farmer lit his pipe with a merry twinkle in his
eye.
“Well, I shouldn’t like to say as Miss Letty couldn’t do any blessed
thing as she pleased,” declared he gallantly, “but I’m bound to allow,
it don’t look likely so far.” And he nodded to them all round as he went
on his way to the station.
“What don’t look like it?” asked the young miller, coming out of the
mill with his whitened face. He had not heard the last passage of arms.
“’Ere’s Letty Cox swears she’ll get Mr. Frewin to be her beau for a
Sunday evening,” laughed one of the girls, nudging her friend
good-humouredly.
The miller looked at Letty sharply; then he smiled.
“Bob Frewin ’ain’t been seen walking with a young ’ooman since Bett
throwed him over,” said he.
“Well that ain’t no reason,” smiled Letty with a little pout, and a
killing glance from under the black fringes of her soft grey eyes.
The miller answered it as it became him to do, and the girl who had
spoken before giggled: “Lor, ain’t she just a bit set up?” said she.
But the miller did not seem to mind.
“Ye promised to walk with _me_ next Sunday though,” said he
persuasively.
“There’s no tellin’ what I might be wantin’ to do next Sunday,” said
she. “It might be rainin’ for aught we know.”
“It might,” allowed he. “But again it mightn’t, and if it don’t—well, ye
promised.”
“Did I then?” repeated Letty innocently. “Well, there’s other Sundays,
and I bet Mr. Frewin shall walk with me one on ’em.”
“Done with you for a pair o’ gloves,” cried the miller, laughing, “for I
bet he won’t!” And Letty flushed and demurred, for such a precise
arrangement as this had not occurred to her; but the girls were
delighted and wouldn’t let her refuse.
“They’ll be sure to be a nice pair, Letty,” whispered they. And Letty
thought so too, and since she was so very, very sure to succeed, it
seemed a pity to forego both the gift and the glory of winning it.
“All right then,” said she at last, blushing still and smiling; “when
’ave it got to be?”
“Sunday come three weeks,” declared he; but the other girls meant to see
fair play, and vowed that this was far, very far from it.
“Well, if a woman can’t make a fool of a man in three weeks, she ain’t
goin’ to do it at all,” answered he. “Ye did for me in one!”
There was a roar at this, and at that very moment the cause of all this
commotion strode back again down the road passing the bridge by on the
left this time, with his bundle of sorted letters in his right hand and
his bag slung in front of him. He might very well have heard the
miller’s last words, for they had been spoken in a loud voice, but his
face was inscrutable, though the scowl upon it had deepened momentarily.
“Well,” added the miller, as he watched him pass, “I’ll grant ye you’ve
a tough job, so we’ll say Sunday come four weeks. That’ll throw ye in
Bank ’Oliday, and I’m sure that ought to count double.”
The girls giggled afresh as the miller went indoors.
“My, what a lark, Letty,” said one. “I wish it was me. My best gloves
ain’t fit to be seen. But I don’t suppose ye’ll get ’em.”
And then they all parted and ran off to their various jobs, and left
Letty, with the only one who lived up her way, to climb the village
street to the old farm.
“I wish now as I ’adn’t done it,” sighed the girl half seriously.
But the other rallied and encouraged her, envying her secretly between
whiles.
The farm stood above the village, on a common that was breezy when the
valley lay languid in the heat; cherry and plum-trees were a-bloom in
the orchard, and daffodils along the sides of the straight brick-paved
walk that led from the gate to the old-fashioned porch.
As Letty stood in that porch the very self-same evening drying her plump
brown arms on a cloth after washing up the tea-things, the postman
stopped at the gate and began looking through the letters in his left
hand.
The girl hung down her head and blushed; she was resolved, but she had
not thought she would have to begin so soon; she was not ready.
As it so happened she could not have opened her campaign more neatly. He
had always set her down as a bit of a bold-faced hussy, and had never
looked at her properly, but with her eyes cast down, and her fresh cheek
flushed with a modest pink, he was fain to take a good stare at her,
waiting for her to come down to the gate and take the letter as usual.
But somehow she did not come, and he was forced to go up the garden walk
to the porch.
“I’ve got something for ye at last,” said he stiffly as she did not
speak. “I ’ope it’ll be good news.” And he handed the letter.
Still she did not look up; her courage had all forsaken her.
“Shall I lay it down ’ere?” said he, pointing to the window-sill.
“Yes, do,” answered she, “my ’ands is wet;” and then she stole a glance
at him and he felt the softness of her grey eyes flash suddenly into
his.
She lowered hers again at once, but the first shot in the war had been
most successfully fired, although she did not guess it.
He blushed.
“Good evening to you,” said he hastily.
And he strode down the path again and swung to the latch-gate with a
jerk.
Again Letty was sorry that she had made that silly wager.
The days passed by, and the postman had not come again to the farm with
a letter, neither would the now unwilling besieger of his heart have
found an opportunity of addressing him again, even had she desired to do
so.
He kept himself aloof, and not all the chaff of more envious companions,
nor the merry persuasion of her clever friends, could induce the girl to
accost him as she had so frankly done before she had undertaken to win
him.
The miller’s Sunday came round. In fresh shirt-front and well-brushed
hat he turned up, as arranged, to take her for the promised walk.
“It’s goin’ to rain,” said Letty, “the clouds is awful black.”
“We won’t go far,” answered the young man, “and I can ’old the umbrella
over your ’at and feathers if it should come down a bit.”
So Letty went, but it was against her will, though she couldn’t have
told you why, for the miller was a likely man for a husband, seeing that
he was as handsome a fellow as any in the village, and had about the
best prospects. She laughed and chatted and chaffed, however, as was her
wont, and how was the postman to know, when they met him presently going
soberly to evening church with his old mother, that she was not quite so
merry for the rest of the way, and went home quite half-an-hour earlier
than she had intended?
But that might have been because the rain came down as she had
prophesied, and she had supper to get at home, and could not risk being
late by staying at the mill till the storm was over, as the miller’s
mother had begged her to do.
Nevertheless her skirt was drenched when she got to the top of the hill.
Perhaps it was a fellow feeling in the matter of having one’s Sunday
best spoilt that made her take her courage in both hands and accost the
postman when she met him again, just at her own door, walking without
any protection against the weather in his black broad-cloth and tall
hat.
“Won’t ye take the loan o’ my umbrella, Mr. Frewin?” said she timidly.
“It’s comin’ down wonderful hard.”
Ben Frewin stopped, and as luck would have it, looked at her.
Her eyes were wistful, and there was a bashful sort of appeal in them
that he had never seen there before. _He_ could not account for it, but
she might have done so; that is to say, she might have done so if she
had been in the habit of analyzing her feelings. As it was, she did not
know that shame for what she had undertaken was at the bottom of the
sudden fit of apologetic coyness that made her so doubly and
unconsciously fascinating.
From any one else, and still more from her at any other moment, Frewin
would curtly have refused the offered civility. But she looked so timid
and so anxious, standing there in the rain with her skirts gathered
round her, and the umbrella half held out towards him, that he hadn’t
the courage to snub her.
“Well, it’s real kind of you,” said he. “But ye’ll have to run indoors
first, or ye’ll spoil yer pretty ’at.”
She turned and tripped up the path, and he must needs of course follow,
the gate slamming to behind him. At the porch she closed the umbrella
and held it out to him, but a voice from within called out
authoritatively:
“Whatever don’t ye ask Mr. Frewin to step indoors for, Letty? Ye’ll both
get wet to the skin out there.”
“Please won’t ye come in?” repeated the girl obediently. “Mother and me
’ll be very pleased.” And of course she had to lift those grey eyes up
to his again, and though he had sworn that he would never cross glance
with theirs more, yet he found his gaze entangled afresh, and for an
instant did not remove it. Then his senses awoke to their danger, and he
donned his armour again hastily.
“Thank ye,” said he almost roughly, “I won’t come in now, if you please.
And there ain’t no call to trouble ye for the humbrella neither. The
rain’s a’most over.”
She was looking out into the garden, and would not see that disputed
article which he was holding out towards her.
“Oh no,” declared she. “It’s pourin’ still. Mother won’t be pleased if
ye don’t step in for five minutes.”
But he was on his guard now, and obdurate.
“Not to-night,” said he shortly. And he placed the umbrella beside her
against the lintel of the door. “Men ain’t afraid of a drop o’ rain, ye
know, same as a girl’d be for sake of ’er smart clothes. It’s lucky for
you it didn’t come on so ’ard when you was out a-walking with Mr.
Lambert.”
Mr. Lambert was the young miller, and at any other time Letty would have
tittered delighted at this covert proof of jealousy. But to-night she
was half-hurt and half-frightened at it, and shrank back into herself.
“As you please,” answered she, pouting a little. And when he had gone,
and she went in to get the tea, she was quite cross at being scolded for
not having made him come in, and cross again with her friend who ran
over from her home opposite when the storm was past, and congratulated
her upon having got that far towards the winning of her bet.
“I don’t want to win no bet,” declared she. “He’s a uncivil sort of a
chap, and I don’t know as I cares to ’ave nothink to do with ’im. And
what’s more, I don’t think as bettin’s nice for girls, and I don’t know
as I shall go on with it.”
“Well, whatever did ye do it for then?” cried the other.
“Because ye was all a-worryin’ of me on, I suppose,” retorted Letty,
with a sharpness very unlike her usual merry and good-humoured self.
“Ye didn’t ought to go for a thing and not stick to it,” said her
friend, vexed to see such a good piece of fun fall flat. “But there,
ye’ll do it yet. Ye never was one to cry ‘’Ware!’ There’s no ’arm in it.
It’s only for a bit of a lark, and he’s fair sport, he’s such a mooney,
thinkin’ as he can walk through without seein’ us. I like his cheek.”
“Well, there’s no tellin’ what I may do and what I mayn’t do,” said
Letty, tossing her head, and in that she was perfectly right, and many
had said it of her before.
“The gloves’ll be beauties, that I’ll take my oath of,” said the girl
encouragingly as she went.
Nevertheless time passed, and nothing of great moment occurred in this
interesting duel that so many were eagerly watching, while one at least
of the combatants was unaware of being engaged in it.
One day, coming home from the next station where she had been to see a
married sister, Letty found herself alone in the same carriage with Bob
Frewin, who had had occasion to go to the town hard by. And though no
one could exactly accuse him of an on-coming disposition, any one who
had seen him would have allowed that the postman was more friendly than
he had been to a girl for many a long day. Letty had noticed it herself,
and though piqued by his manner on that wet Sunday, she had begun with
her proudest and most off-hand mood—the mood that always “fetched” the
men, but which, to do her justice, she would not have dreamed of
intentionally trying on such a tough customer—she lapsed into her
apologetic and gentle manner long before the journey was over. And when
they reached their destination, and Letty, in shame-faced distress,
found that she had dropped her return ticket, and must pay the fare over
again, it was not Frewin’s loan that she would accept to replenish her
empty purse. As it so happened, Mr. Lambert was there, going off to
London, and it was his shilling that Letty chose to take, declaring that
as he lived close by, she could the more easily repay it.
It was what the men called a woman’s excuse that didn’t bear sifting,
and it naturally had the effect of sending Frewin off with a flea in his
ear and a sour face, so that the miller very cheerfully declared to
Letty in confidence, that he didn’t see any call to buy the gloves in
readiness, as he had intended to do that very day.
Things, in fact, were not going at all hopefully for Letty’s wager,
which was perhaps the reason why she was going about with a more serious
expression than her careless beauty had ever worn before, and why she
never appeared on the bridge of an evening now, and even went past knots
of her old comrades in the village with a hasty nod or such a conscious
bit of chaff as might have betrayed to any one her unusual state of
mind.
Bank Holiday loomed in the near distance without the wager being any
nearer the winning than three weeks ago. And if it had not been for an
unforeseen incident perhaps it would never have been won at all. But won
it was, and this was how it came about.
It was a bright, clear spring morning. A keen east wind was blowing the
cherry-blossom about, and the narcissus and daffodils along the cottage
path swayed beneath it; but the sun was shining, and it was a good
drying day, so Letty had just set to at the week’s washing, and was
standing with her arms white in suds, when she saw Frewin open the gate
and come slowly—very slowly—up to the door. She dried her hands and went
to open it.
He held out a black-edged letter towards her.
“I’m sure I ’ope it ain’t bad news,” said he sadly.
She took it with a frightened face, still drying her hands mechanically.
He turned his back, preparing to depart; yet he waited until she had
opened it.
A little low ripple of laughter broke from her.
“Well, I suppose I ought to be ashamed to laugh,” said she. “But, Lor’,
it give me such a fright I can’t ’elp but be pleased. Ye see, my
brother’s away at sea, and it do give ye a turn when ye get a thing like
this. But it’s only to say as old Aunt Porter’s gone, and she’s been
bedridden and childish this ten years, and I ’aven’t seed her for
twenty! Mother’d say it weren’t seemly of me not to take on, but, truth
to tell, I’m so pleased it ain’t Jim, I can’t seem to mind much.”
“O’ course not,” assented the postman. "Old folks is bound to go,"—and
he sighed—“and when they’s lost their wits and their limbs ’tis but a
’appy release, as the saying is. Well, I’m glad it ain’t nothink wrong
with yer brother,” he said as he turned to go. But he said it sadly, and
sighed again.
Letty put the letter in her pocket, and lifted her eyes to his with
their sweetest, kindest look.
“It’s very friendly o’ you to mind whether the news was good or bad,”
said she with a little laugh. “I’m sure it ain’t many as’d care a rap.
Do you mind all the black-edged letters as ye give round now?”
There was just a thought of roguishness in the smile, and just a
suspicion of the old coquettish air in the tilt of the dainty face; but
it must only have been from habit, for the pretty grey eyes were a
little dewy still, and the voice had none of the usual raillery in its
tone.
But Frewin did not answer her question, and his quiet young face was
still sad and preoccupied as he said:
“I’m in trouble myself to-day. I’d be sorry to bring the same to
anybody.”
Her expression changed at once; every trace of coquetry was wiped out of
it in a twinkling. She came a step nearer to him.
“In trouble!” echoed she. “Now I _am_ sorry. But p’r’aps ye wouldn’t
care to tell, me being but a stranger, so to speak.”
“I don’t know as you’re so much a stranger,” he began, and then he broke
off. “I ha’n’t got nobody but mother,” he added in a moment,
irrelevantly.
“What, she ain’t sick?” cried the girl quickly, with real feeling in her
voice.
“Got to go to the ’orspital,” answered Frewin shortly. “It’s her eyes.
They say as she’ll be stone blind if she don’t ’ave su’thing done
immediate. They say as it’d be coward-like o’ me not to persuade her to
it, for it’s sarten-sure to be all right; but, Lor’, I ain’t got no
faith in doctors.”
Letty was silent—most likely she shared his opinion, and could find
nothing consolatory to say, but her pretty face was full of sympathy. He
allowed himself one piece of comfort; he looked at it. Their eyes met,
and hers filled with tears; but not before she had poured something into
his that was not only sympathy.
“Good-day,” said he quickly, and in another minute he was hurrying down
the road.
But the wager was won, though the village little guessed it, and though
Letty gave that part of the matter never a thought just then—never a
thought till Bank Holiday came and went without her having so much as a
bit of a swain for the day—never a thought till the girls came up and
laughed at her, and pitied her for having spent it sitting alone in the
chimney-corner.
Then she thought of it, but not as they imagined. She did not tell them
that she might have had the handsome miller for a “walking-stick”
without any trouble at all—that he had laughingly declared he was in
luck’s way, since he was like to keep the gloves and get her company as
well, upon which she had tossed her head with all those old airs of
supremacy which so forsook her in her intercourse with Bob Frewin, and
told him that he might keep the gloves and welcome, but that her company
he should never have again; she did not tell them that she might have
been winning her wager that very afternoon, but that the young postman
had been obliged to use this one day off duty to take his mother up to
the hospital; she did not tell them, because she was doing her very best
to forget she had ever made that wager at all.
But she was destined to win it for all that. The operation on the old
woman’s eyes passed off most successfully, and every morning and every
evening as Bob Frewin strode up and down the village street, with his
post-bag swinging in front of him, and his sorted bundle of letters in
his left hand, Letty managed to be somewhere about in the garden or the
porch just to hear the last news of the invalid.
When Saturday evening came, the weather, that had been wet all the week,
cleared up for a fine Sunday; it was the very last Sunday that was left
to win the wager in, but it was not on that account that Letty’s heart
beat as she saw Frewin stop at the wicket, and not seeing her in the
front garden, fumble a minute at the latch, and come half reluctantly up
to the porch.
She was glad that she was in the orchard beside the house, taking down
the linen that she had hung out in the morning to dry—for the big
apple-tree, that was pink with budding bloom, sheltered her, and from
behind the sheet that she was just going to unfasten from the line she
could watch him unseen.
But she wondered whether her mother would say where she was, and she
just edged a little further beyond her ambuscade as she saw him turn
away from the door.
Her heart beat, but—yes, mother had told, or else he had seen her, for
he came towards her through the side wicket.
Then she came forward, and her smile was so tremulous, and her cheeks so
blushing, that he seemed to forget all his stand-offishness and any
cause of offence that he might have, and to take heart of grace from her
bashfulness.
“Ye are busy,” said he, “but I won’t keep ye long. Mother’s getting on
first-rate, and the Sister has writ me a line for her. There’s a message
for you in it.”
The grey eyes went up to his.
“I do call that kind,” said she. “What is it?”
It was the young man who blushed now.
“It’s a foolish message,” said he with a little laugh. “But mothers are
that way. Anyway it don’t seem fair not to give it ye.”
“Oh, never mind,” faltered the girl, for there was a misgiving at her
heart. But he had taken the letter out of his pocket.
“Tell Letty Cox,” he said, “as I thank her for her kindness to my lad in
his trouble.”
“Kindness!” repeated she tremulously, and with downcast face.
“Well, when a feller’s a bit down, miss, ye wouldn’t think how it sort
o’ cheers ’im up to ’ave somebody ’pear to care. It’s not many thinks of
an old woman, but mother’s all the world to me.”
“O’ course she is,” murmured Letty.
“Leastways,” added the postman, rather darkly, “I didn’t think as I
should ever think of another female but ’er again.”
“No,” said Letty softly.
“But there’s never no tellin’ what folks’ll do—man nor woman,” added
Frewin wisely.
“No,” said Letty again.
And then there was a pause, during which she unfixed another white sheet
from against the gentle blue of the evening sky.
“You’ll excuse me if I’m too free, miss,” said Frewin presently. “But
you see—well, there, it was talk o’ the village, so ye must ’ave ’eard
it with the rest! I was fooled once, and that’s the truth, and I don’t
mean to be fooled again.”
There was no answer, and Letty’s face was somehow hidden behind the
blushing blossom of a low branch of the apple-tree.
“So p’r’aps you’d excuse me,” he repeated, “if I was to ask you, as a
plain man, whether you was a-walkin’ with Lambert o’ Bank ’Oliday when I
was in town?”
The face emerged from behind its leafy screen, and was no longer
tremulous but haughty.
“Well, it _is_ a queer question,” said she, “and no mistake! But,” she
added quickly, seeing him turn away,—“well, there, I don’t mind
answering: Mr. Lambert asked me, but I didn’t fancy ’im. I sat alone all
day.”
And it may have been the shame of such a confession from an acknowledged
village belle that called the blush again to her cheek.
“Ye don’t say so, now,” declared the man, pleased. “Ye see, ye took
Lambert’s loan as against mine the other day at the station, and, one
thing and another—well, there—a man ain’t goin’ to be fooled twice, you
bet.”
At the last word she hung her head lower than ever, and there was
another pause.
At last he said, sheepishly now: “But I don’t s’pose ye would walk with
me next Sunday. Though it seems clearin’ up for a nice day.”
He waited for an answer, but none came. Only after a minute or so a
little sound as of stifled sobbing came from behind the white screen.
“Lor, whatever is the matter?” cried Frewin aghast. “Is it me that’s
upset ye, my dear? There, ye don’t need to come if ye don’t want to. Any
girl can say a feller nay. There’s no ’arm done yet.”
But still she cried on.
“I’d come right enough,” faltered she at last, between the sobs.
“But—but there _is_ ’arm done.”
And then suddenly she dried her eyes, and looked up at him with frank,
fearless gaze.
“Your mother said as I’d been kind to ye, Mr. Frewin,” said she. “But I
’ain’t been—for I’ve behaved bad to ye. Yes, I ’ave. And ye said as you
weren’t goin’ to be fooled again. And—and I like ye too well to fool ye,
and that’s truth. And—and so I’d rather tell ye as I _’ave_ fooled ye
already.”
His face went white, and he stared at her.
“Fooled me!” echoed he. “Not a bit of it!”
“Yes, I ’ave,” insisted she doggedly. “The girls said ye was a rude,
surly chap as wouldn’t throw a word to any of us, and I swore I’d make
you. And then Charlie Lambert dared me to, and wagered me a pair o’
gloves it’d be no go. It was just a lark,” said she half defiantly, but
then added, with a tell-tale throb of the voice, “though you can’t say
as I’ve ever done it.”
Frewin did not smile, the unconscious humour of the phrase did not seem
to strike him; he was upset.
“It was a dirty trick to play on a chap,” said he at last, “and Lambert
shall pay me out for it.”