about the room, stepped to the fireplace and
picked up a poker--a small one with a crook at the end. "Will this
help?" she asked, passing it out.
"Eh? the very thing!" He took it, and presently she heard it
scraping on the pipe in search of the obstruction. "Cleared it, by
Jingo! and that's famous." He lowered himself upon the flat of his
broad soles. "You ought to ha' been a plumber's wife. My! if I had
a headpiece like that to think for me--let alone to look at!"
"Give me back the poker, please."
"No tricks, now!" He handed it back, chuckled, and lowering himself
back to the topmost rung of the ladder, stood in safety. "You're as
white as a sheet. Was you scared I'd fall? Lord, I like to see you
look like that! it a'most makes me want to do it again. Look here--"
"For pity's sake--"
Was the man mad? And how was it he held her listening to his
intolerable talk? He was actually scrambling up to the sill again,
but paused with his eyes on hers. "It hurts you? Very well, then, I
won't: but I owe you something for that slap in the face, you know."
"You deserved it!" Hetty exclaimed, flushing as she recoiled from
terror to unreasonable wrath, and at the same moment hating herself
for arguing with him.
"Did I? Well, I bear ye no malice. Go slow, and overlook offences--
that's William Wright's way, and I've no pride, so I gets it in the
end. Now some men, after being treated like that, would have sat
down and wrote a letter to your father about your goings-on.
I thought of it. Says I, 'It don't take more than a line from me,
and the fat's in the fire.' Mind, I don't say that I won't, but I
ha'n't done it yet. And look here--I'm a journeyman, as you know,
and on the tramp for jobs. I push on for Lincoln this afternoon; and
what I say to you before leaving is this--you're a lady, every inch.
Don't you go and make yourself too cheap with that fella. He's a
pretty man enough, but there ain't no honesty in him."
He was gone. Hetty drew a long breath. Then, having waited while
the ladder too was withdrawn, she fetched back the children and set
them before their copy-books.
"_Honesty is the best policy_."--She saw Master George fairly started
on this text, with his head on one side and his tongue working in the
corner of his mouth; and drawing out paper and ink began to write a
letter home.
"Dear Mother--," she wrote, glanced at George's copy-book, then at
the window. Five minutes pa
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