aturday? He
was taking his hundreds of pounds to the Bank every week in canvas
bags, as all the world knew.

But no, she must needs hanker after Jack, and that's why I say it's
such nonsense.

Well, when the letter come, I was up to my elbows in the
jam-making--raspberry and currant it was,--and Mattie, she was down
in the garden getting the last berries off the canes. My hands were
stained up above the wrist with the currant juice, so I took the
letter up by the corner of my apron and I went down the garden with
it.

'Mattie,' I calls out, 'here's a letter from that good-for-nothing
fellow of yours.'

She couldn't see me, and she thought I was chaffing her about him,
which I often did, to keep things pleasant.

'Don't tease me, Jane,' she says, 'for I do feel this morning as if
I could hardly bear myself as it is.'

And as she said it I came out through the canes close to her with
the letter in my hand. But when she see the letter she dropped the
basket with the raspberries in it (they rolled all about on the
ground right under the peony bush, for that was a silly,
old-fashioned garden, with the flowers and fruit about it anyhow),
and I had a nice business picking them up, and she threw her arms
round my neck and kissed me, and cried like the silly little thing
she was, and thanked me for bringing the letter, just as if I had
anything to do with it, or any wish or will one way or another; and
then she opened the letter, and seemed to forget all about me while
she read it.

I remember the sun was so bright on the white paper that I could
scarce see to read it over her shoulder, she not noticing me, nor
anything else, any more. It was like this--

'DEAR MATTIE,--This comes hoping to find you well, as it leaves me
at present.

'I don't bear no malice over what your father said and done, but I'm
not coming to his house.

'Now Mattie, if you have forgot me, or think more of some other
chap, don't let anything stand in the way of your letting me know it
straight and plain. But if you do remember how we used to walk from
church, and the valentine, and the piece of poetry about Cupid's
dart that I copied for you out of the poetry-book, you will come and
meet me in the little ash copse, you know where. I may be prevented
coming, for I've a lot of things to see to, and I am going to
Liverpool on Thursday, and if we are to be married you will have to
come to me there, for my business won't bear being left, and I m