So quiet and
lonely, and such pleasant glimpses down long oaken glades, with a
bright carpet of springing fern. Surely there will be a couple here
this sweet May evening.
So there is! Walking this way too! George Hawker is one of them; but we
can't see who the other is. Who should it be but Mary, though, with
whom he should walk, with his arm round her waist talking so
affectionately. But see, she raises her head. Why! that is not Mary.
That is old Jewel's dowdy, handsome, brazen-faced grandaughter.
"Now I'm going home to supper, Miss Jenny," he says. "So you pack off,
or you'll have your amiable mother asking after you. By-the-bye, your
sister's going to be married, ain't she?"
He referred to her eldest sister--the one that the Vicar and the
Doctor saw nursing a baby the night that old Jewel died.
"Yes," replied the girl. "Her man's going to have her at last; that's
his baby she's got, you know; and it seems he'll sooner make her work
for keeping it, than pay for it hisself. So they're going to be
married; better late than never."
George left her and went in; into the gloomy old kitchen, now darkening
rapidly.
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