Totty immediately with great gravity lifted up her
frock, and showed a tiny pink pocket at present in
a state of collapse.
“It dot notin’ in it,” she said,
as she looked down at it very earnestly.
“No! What a pity! Such a pretty pocket.
Well, I think I’ve got some things in mine that
will make a pretty jingle in it. Yes! I declare
I’ve got five little round silver things, and
hear what a pretty noise they make in Totty’s
pink pocket.” Here he shook the pocket with
the five sixpences in it, and Totty showed her teeth
and wrinkled her nose in great glee; but, divining
that there was nothing more to be got by staying,
she jumped off the shelf and ran away to jingle her
pocket in the hearing of Nancy, while her mother called
after her, “Oh for shame, you naughty gell!
Not to thank the captain for what he’s given
you I’m sure, sir, it’s very kind of you;
but she’s spoiled shameful; her father won’t
have her said nay in anything, and there’s no
managing her. It’s being the youngest,
and th’ only gell.”
“Oh, she’s a funny little fatty; I wouldn’t
have her different. But I must be going now,
for I suppose the rector is waiting for me.”
With a “good-bye,” a bright glance, and
a bow to Hetty Arthur left the dairy. But he
was mistaken in imagining himself waited for.
The rector had been so much interested in his conversation
with Dinah that he would not have chosen to close
it earlier; and you shall hear now what they had been
saying to each other.
A Vocation
Dinah, who had risen when the gentlemen came
in, but still kept hold of the sheet she was mending,
curtsied respectfully when she saw Mr. Irwine looking
at her and advancing towards her. He had never
yet spoken to her, or stood face to face with her,
and her first thought, as her eyes met his, was, “What
a well-favoured countenance! Oh that the good
seed might fall on that soil, for it would surely
flourish.” The agreeable impression must
have been mutual, for Mr. Irwine bowed to her with
a benignant deference, which would have been equally
in place if she had been the most dignified lady of
his acquaintance.
“You are only a visitor in this neighbourhood,
I think?” were his first words, as he seated
himself opposite to her.
“No, sir, I come from Snowfield, in Stonyshire.
But my aunt was very kind, wanting me to have rest
from my work there, because I’d been ill, and
she invited me to come and stay with her for a while.”
“Ah, I remember Snowfield very well; I once
had occasion to go there. It’s a dreary
bleak place. They were building a cotton-mill
there; but that’s many years ago now. I
suppose the place is a good deal changed by the employment
that mill must have brought.”
“It is changed so far as the mill has brought
people there, who get a livelihood for themselves
by working in it, and make it better for the tradesfolks.
I work in it myself, and have reason to be grateful,
for thereby I have enough and to spare. But it’s
still a bleak place, as you say, sir—very
different from this country.”
