Rose.  Well, Mr. Davis, who would ever have thought it?

[Mrs. Browning and Dorry come back and the cider is put upon the table, Dorry and Annie getting glasses from the dresser.

George. [Drinking.] Your health, Steve, and yours, too, Miss Sims.  And many years of happiness to you both.

Steve.  Thank you kindly, George.

Annie.  Thank you, Mr. Davis.

Dorry.  Hasn’t Miss Sims got a nice frock on her for the dance, Mr.
Davis?

George.  Well, I’m blessed if I’d taken no notice of it, Dorry.

Dorry.  Why, you’re worse nor Dad, I do declare!  But you just look at Rosie, now, Mr. Davis, and ask her what she’s got wrapped up in that there paper in her hand.

Rose.  O, Dorry, you little tease, you!

Dorry.  You just ask her, Mr. Davis.

Rose. [Undoing the parcel.] There, ’tis nothing to make such a commotion of!  Just a flower—­see, Mr. Davis?  I knowed as it was one what you was partial to, and so I just brought it along with me.

George.  That there bain’t for I, be it?

Rose.  Indeed ’tis—­if so as you’ll accept of it.

George.  O, ’tis best saved against to-morrow.  The freshness will be most gone from it, if I was to wear it now.

Dorry.  No, no, Mr. Davis, ’tis for now!  To wear at the dance.  Put it on him, Rosie, put it on him.

Rose. [Tossing the flower across the table to George.] He can put it on hisself well enough, Dorry.

George. [After a moment’s hesitation.] I don’t know so well about that.

Annie.  Go on, Rosie—­pin it into his coat.  Come, ’tis getting late.

Dorry.  O, pin it in quick, Rosie—­come along—­and then we can start to the dancing.

Rose.  Shall I, Mr. Davis?

[George gets up and crosses the room; rose takes the flower and Dorry hands her a pin.  She slowly pins the flower in his coat.

Steve. [Stretching out his hand to Annie.] You be so quiet like to-night, Annie.  There isn’t nothing wrong, is there, my dear?

Annie.  ’Tis only I’m that full of gladness, Steve, as I don’t seem to find words to my tongue for the things what I can talk on most days.

Steve.  And that’s how ’tis with I, too, Annie.  ’Tis as though I was out in the meadows, like—­And as though ’twere Sunday, and such a stillness all around that I might think ’twas only me as was upon the earth.  But then summat stirs in me sudden and I knows that you be there, too, and ’tis my love for you what has put me right away from the rest of them.

Annie.  Steve, you’ve had a poor, rough time, I know, but I’ll do my best for to smooth it like for you, I will.