to folks that would have been quite a catch to a girl like her
getting on in years. She might have had young Bath for one, the
strawberry grower; and what if he did drink a bit of a Saturday? 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),