“They be a-goin’ to Susan’s, sure enough.  Well, to be sure!  Of all the hard-hearted brazen-faced—!” words failed her, and she quickened her pace as the couple disappeared round the angle of the lane.  A few minutes’ brisk walking brought the pair, with Betty at their heels, to a solitary cottage standing a little back from the lane in the shelter of a high furze-grown bank.  As the young man tapped at the door Jenny turned and descried Betty’s figure by the garden-gate.

“Is it you, Mrs. Tuffin?” she inquired.  “I can scarce see who ‘tis wi’ the sun shinin’ in my eyes.  Be you a-goin’ in?”

“It’s me,” responded Betty tartly, in reply to the first question, while she dismissed the second with an equally curt “I be.”

The door opened and the figure of a stout elderly woman stood outlined against the glow of firelight within.  She peered out, shading her eyes from the level rays of the sinking sun, and starting back at sight of Jenny.

“’Tis you, be it?  Well, I didn’t think you’d have the face to come, so soon.”

“I did just look in to say a word o’ consolation, Miss Vacher,” said the girl, drawing herself up.  “I be very grieved myself about this melancholy noos.  I’ve a-been cryin’ terrible, I have, an’ says I, ’Me an’ poor Abel’s dear aunt ‘ull mingle our tears.’”

“Mingle fiddlesticks!” said Susan.  “What be that there young spark o’ yours a-doin’ here?  Be he come to drop a tear too?”

“He be come along to take care of I,” said the girl demurely. “’Tis Mr. Sam Keynes.  He didn’t think it right for I to walk so far by myself.  Did ye, Sam?”

“Well, now ye can walk back wi’ her,” said Susan, addressing that gentleman before he had time to answer.  “I don’t want no tears a-mingled here.  Who be that by the gate?”

“’Tis me, Betty Tuffin,” returned the owner of that name.  “I didn’t come wi’ these ’ere young folks—­don’t think it, my dear.  I come to see if this ‘ere noos be true an’ to tell you how sorry I be.”

“I’d ’low the noos bain’t true, but come in all the same, Betty.  I be al’ays glad to see you.  You’d best be marchin’, Jenny Pitcher, you and your new sweetheart, else it’ll be dark afore you get home.”

Jenny looked at her admirer, who nodded encouragingly and nudged her with his elbow.

“I think as we’ve a-come so far,” she remarked, “I must ax leave to step in for a bit, Miss Vacher.  ‘Tis a little matter o’ business, and business is a thing what ought to be attended to immediate.”

Miss Vacher threw open the door with such violence that the handle banged against the wall, and stepped back with sarcastic politeness.

“Oh, come in, do.  Come, and poke and pry, and see what ye can pick for yourself.”

Sarcasm had turned to fury by the time the end of the sentence was reached, and, as Jenny, overcome by conflicting emotions, was about to sink into the nearest chair, she darted forward and snatched it away.