Milton is denied us—I have some lines here; a petition to be handed to mother to-night when she returns. She may not grant it, but she must at least commend her daughter's attempt to catch the tone." And drawing a folded paper from her waistband, she drawled the following, in the broadest Lincolnshire accent:
"Hetty the Serving-maid's Petition to her Mother." "Dear mother, you were once in the ew'n [oven], As by us cakes is plainly shewn, Who else had ne'er come arter: Pray speak a word in time of need, And with my sour-looked father plead For your distressed darter!"
Nancy and Kezzy laughed; the younger at the absurd drawl, which hit off the Wroote dialect to a hair; Nancy indulgently—she was safely betrothed to one John Lambert, an honest land-surveyor, and Mr. Wesley's tyranny towards suitors troubled her no longer. But the others were silent, and a tear dropped on the back of poor Molly's hand.
As Hetty took it penitently, Patty spoke again. "You are wrong, at all events," she persisted, "about papa's being in the house, for I saw him leave it, more than half an hour ago, and walk off on the Bawtry road."
"He has gone to meet mother, then," said Kezzy, "and poor Sander will have to trudge the last two miles."
"Pray Heaven, then, they do not quarrel!" sighed Emilia, shutting the book.
"My dear!" Hetty assured her, "that is past praying for. She will be weary to death; and he, as you know, is in a mood to-day! Though you thought it unfeeling, I rejoiced when he announced he was not riding to Bawtry to meet her but would send Sander instead: for whatever news she brought he would have picked holes in it and wrangled all the way home. But this is his masterpiece. It contrives to get the most annoyance out of both plans. I often wonder"—here Hetty clasped her knee again, and, leaning back against the turf, let her eyes wander over the darkening landscape—"if our father and mother love each other the better for living together in one perpetual rasp of temper?"
"What is the hour?" asked Emilia.
Hetty glanced at the sun.
"Six, or a few minutes past."
"She cannot be here before half-past seven, and by then the moon will be rising. We will give her a regal harvest-supper, and enthrone her on the last sheaf. I have sent word to have it saved. And there shall be a fire, and baked potatoes."
Kitty clapped her hands.
"And," Hetty took up the tale, "she shall sit by the embers and tell us all her wanderings, like Aeneas, till the break of morning. But before we bid Johnny Whitelamb desist from drawing and build a fire, let us be six princesses here and choose the gifts our mother shall bring home from town."
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