she says you have thought of me while
I've been away. Will you marry me, Jane?'

I just looked at him again, and he put his arm round me and gave me
a good kiss. I had to put up with it, though I never could see any
sense in that sort of stuff. Then we walked home together, very
slow, his arm round me.

I daresay some people will think I oughtn't to have acted so, taking
away another girl's fellow. But I was quite sure she would get
plenty that would play love in a cottage with her, and she did not
seem to appreciate her blessings in getting a man that was well off,
and I didn't see how it could be found out, as he was going away
next day.

Now, it would all have gone as well as well if I had had the sense
to offer to see him off at the station, and I ought to have had the
sense to see him well out of the place. But we all make mistakes
sometimes. Mine was in saying 'Good-bye' to him at the corner of the
four-acre and going home by myself, leaving him with three-quarters
of an hour for 'Satan to find some mischief still for idle hands to
do' in.

I said 'Good-bye' to him, and he kissed me, and gave me the address
where to write, and told me what to do.

'For I shan't have no truck with your uncle,' says he. 'I marries my
wife, and I takes her right away.'

It wasn't till I was going up the stairs, untying my bonnet-strings
as I went, and smoothing out the ribbons with my finger and thumb,
for it was my best, that it come to me all in a minute that I had
left Mattie locked up in that church. It was very tiresome, and how
to get her out I didn't know. But I thought maybe she would be
trying some of the other doors, and I might turn the key gently and
away again before she could find out it was unlocked.

So up to the church I went, very hot, and a setting sun, and having
had no tea or anything, and as I began to climb the hill my heart
stood still in my veins, for I heard a sound from the church as I
never expected to hear at that time of the day and week.

'O Lord!' I thought, 'she's tried every other way, and now she's
ringing the bell, and she'll fetch up the whole village, and what
will become of me?'

I made the best haste I could, but I could see more than one black
dot moving up the hill before me that showed me folks on their way
home had heard the bell and was going to see what it meant. And when
I got up there they were trying the big door of the church, not
knowing it was the little side one where