ad now come to
talk about his love,--and in order that his confessions might not be
made before all the assembled haymakers, Roger Carbury hurried to meet
him. There was soon evident on Crumb's broad face a whole sunshine of
delight. As Roger approached him he began to laugh aloud, and to wave
a bit of paper that he had in his hands. 'She's a coomin; she's a
coomin,' were the first words he uttered. Roger knew very well that in
his friend's mind there was but one 'she' in the world, and that the
name of that she was Ruby Ruggles.

'I am delighted to hear it,' said Roger. 'She has made it up with her
grandfather?'

'Don't know now't about grandfeyther. She have made it up wi' me.
Know'd she would when I'd polish'd t'other un off a bit;--know'd she
would.'

'Has she written to you, then?'

'Well, squoire,--she ain't; not just herself. I do suppose that isn't
the way they does it. But it's all as one.' And then Mr Crumb thrust
Mrs Hurtle's note into Roger Carbury's hand.

Roger certainly was not predisposed to think well or kindly of Mrs
Hurtle. Since he had first known Mrs Hurtle's name, when Paul Montague
had told the story of his engagement on his return from America, Roger
had regarded her as a wicked, intriguing, bad woman. It may, perhaps,
be confessed that he was prejudiced against all Americans, looking
upon Washington much as he did upon Jack Cade or Wat Tyler; and he
pictured to himself all American women as being loud, masculine, and
atheistical. But it certainly did seem that in this instance Mrs
Hurtle was endeavouring to do a good turn from pure charity. 'She is a
lady,' Crumb began to explain, 'who do be living with Mrs Pipkin; and
she is a lady as is a lady.'

Roger could not fully admit the truth of this assertion; but he
explained that he, too, knew something of Mrs Hurtle, and that he
thought it probable that what she said of Ruby might be true. 'True,
squoire,' said Crumb, laughing with his whole face. 'I ha' nae a doubt
it's true. What's again its being true? When I had dropped into
t'other fellow, of course she made her choice. It was me as was to
blame, because I didn't do it before. I ought to ha' dropped into him
when I first heard as he was arter her. It's that as girls like. So,
squoire, I'm just going again to Lon'on right away.'

Roger suggested that old Ruggles would, of course, receive his niece;
but as to this John expressed his supreme indifference. The old man
was nothing to him.