However, he kept talking to us all the time we were in the shop; and then waving the shopman with the unpurchased gloves on one side, with “Another time, sir! another time!” he walked home with us.  I am happy to say my client, Miss Matilda, also left the shop in an equally bewildered state, not having purchased either green or red silk.  Mr Holbrook was evidently full with honest loud-spoken joy at meeting his old love again; he touched on the changes that had taken place; he even spoke of Miss Jenkyns as “Your poor sister!  Well, well! we have all our faults”; and bade us good-bye with many a hope that he should soon see Miss Matty again.  She went straight to her room, and never came back till our early tea-time, when I thought she looked as if she had been crying.

CHAPTER IV—­A VISIT TO AN OLD BACHELOR

A few days after, a note came from Mr Holbrook, asking us—­ impartially asking both of us—­in a formal, old-fashioned style, to spend a day at his house—­a long June day—­for it was June now.  He named that he had also invited his cousin, Miss Pole; so that we might join in a fly, which could be put up at his house.

I expected Miss Matty to jump at this invitation; but, no!  Miss Pole and I had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to go.  She thought it was improper; and was even half annoyed when we utterly ignored the idea of any impropriety in her going with two other ladies to see her old lover.  Then came a more serious difficulty.  She did not think Deborah would have liked her to go.  This took us half a day’s good hard talking to get over; but, at the first sentence of relenting, I seized the opportunity, and wrote and despatched an acceptance in her name—­fixing day and hour, that all might be decided and done with.

The next morning she asked me if I would go down to the shop with her; and there, after much hesitation, we chose out three caps to be sent home and tried on, that the most becoming might be selected to take with us on Thursday.

She was in a state of silent agitation all the way to Woodley.  She had evidently never been there before; and, although she little dreamt I knew anything of her early story, I could perceive she was in a tremor at the thought of seeing the place which might have been her home, and round which it is probable that many of her innocent girlish imaginations had clustered.  It was a long drive there, through paved jolting lanes.  Miss Matilda sat bolt upright, and looked wistfully out of the windows as we drew near the end of our journey.  The aspect of the country was quiet and pastoral.  Woodley stood among fields; and there was an old-fashioned garden where roses and currant-bushes touched each other, and where the feathery asparagus formed a pretty background to the pinks and gilly-flowers; there was no drive up to the door.  We got out at a little gate, and walked up a straight box-edged path.