The next few days Mattie was like a different girl. I will say for
her that she always did her fair share of the work, but she did it
with a face as long as a fiddle. Only now her face was all round and
dimply, and like a child's that has got a prize at school.

On Wednesday afternoon she said to me, 'I'm going to meet Jack, and
don't you say a word to the others about it, Jane. I'll tell father
myself when I come back, if you'll get the tea like a good girl, and
just tell them I've gone up to the village.'

'I don't tell lies as a rule, especially for other people,' I says;
'but I don't mind doing it for you this once.'

And she kissed me (she had got mighty fond of kissing these last few
days), and ran upstairs to get ready. When she come down, if you'll
believe me, she wasn't in her best dress as any other girl would
have been, but she had gone and put on a dowdy old green and white
delaine that had been her Sunday dress, trimmed with green satin
piping, three years before, and the old hat she had with all the
flowers faded and the ribbons crumpled up, that was three year old
too, and the very one she used to walk home from church with him on
Sundays in. And her with a really good blue poplin laid by and a new
bonnet with red roses in it, only come home the week before from
Maidstone.

She come through the kitchen where I was setting the tea, and she
took the key of the church off the nail in the wall. Our farm was
full a mile from the village, and half way between it and the
church. So we kept one key, and Jack's uncle, who was the sexton, he
had the other.