“Ah, there’s no knowing what may happen before Lady day,” said Mrs. Irwine.  “It struck me on Arthur’s birthday that the old man was a little shaken:  he’s eighty-three, you know.  It’s really an unconscionable age.  It’s only women who have a right to live as long as that.”

“When they’ve got old-bachelor sons who would be forlorn without them,” said Mr. Irwine, laughing, and kissing his mother’s hand.

Mrs. Poyser, too, met her husband’s occasional forebodings of a notice to quit with “There’s no knowing what may happen before Lady day”—­one of those undeniable general propositions which are usually intended to convey a particular meaning very far from undeniable.  But it is really too hard upon human nature that it should be held a criminal offence to imagine the death even of the king when he is turned eighty-three.  It is not to be believed that any but the dullest Britons can be good subjects under that hard condition.

Apart from this foreboding, things went on much as usual in the Poyser household.  Mrs. Poyser thought she noticed a surprising improvement in Hetty.  To be sure, the girl got “closer tempered, and sometimes she seemed as if there’d be no drawing a word from her with cart-ropes,” but she thought much less about her dress, and went after the work quite eagerly, without any telling.  And it was wonderful how she never wanted to go out now—­indeed, could hardly be persuaded to go; and she bore her aunt’s putting a stop to her weekly lesson in fine-work at the Chase without the least grumbling or pouting.  It must be, after all, that she had set her heart on Adam at last, and her sudden freak of wanting to be a lady’s maid must have been caused by some little pique or misunderstanding between them, which had passed by.  For whenever Adam came to the Hall Farm, Hetty seemed to be in better spirits and to talk more than at other times, though she was almost sullen when Mr. Craig or any other admirer happened to pay a visit there.

Adam himself watched her at first with trembling anxiety, which gave way to surprise and delicious hope.  Five days after delivering Arthur’s letter, he had ventured to go to the Hall Farm again—­not without dread lest the sight of him might be painful to her.  She was not in the house-place when he entered, and he sat talking to Mr. and Mrs. Poyser for a few minutes with a heavy fear on his heart that they might presently tell him Hetty was ill.  But by and by there came a light step that he knew, and when Mrs. Poyser said, “Come, Hetty, where have you been?” Adam was obliged to turn round, though he was afraid to see the changed look there must be in her face.  He almost started when he saw her smiling as if she were pleased to see him—­looking the same as ever at a first glance, only that she had her cap on, which he had never seen her in before when he came of an evening.  Still, when he looked at her again and again as she moved about or sat at her work, there was a change:  the cheeks were