Without a word she left the room to obey. Of course she had no defence. Agnes, her tears falling, pecked her food timidly like a bird, not daring to stir from her chair, even to assist at the finger.
“What did Mr. Mynors say?” Tellwright inquired fiercely when Anna had come back into the room.
“Mr. Mynors?” she murmured, at a loss, but vaguely apprehending further trouble.
“Did ye see him?”
“Yes, father.”
“Did ye give him my message?”
“I forgot it.” God in heaven! She had forgotten the message!
With a devastating grunt Mr. Tellwright walked speechless out of the room. The girls cleared the table, exchanging sympathy with a single mute glance. Anna’s one satisfaction was that, even if she had remembered the message, she could not possibly have delivered it.
Ephraim Tellwright stayed in the front parlour till half-past ten o’clock, unseen but felt, like an angry god behind a cloud. The consciousness that he was there, unappeased and dangerous, remained uppermost in the minds of the two girls during the morning. At half-past ten he opened the door.
“Agnes!” he commanded, and Agnes ran to him from the kitchen with the speed of propitiation.
“Yes, father.”
“Take this note down to Price’s, and don’t wait for an answer.”
“Yes, father.”
She was back in twenty minutes. Anna was sweeping the lobby.
“If Mr. Mynors calls while I’m out, you mun tell him to wait,” Mr. Tellwright said to Agnes, pointedly ignoring Anna’s presence. Then, having brushed his greenish hat on his sleeve he went off towards town to buy meat and vegetables. He always did Saturday’s marketing himself. At the butcher’s and in the St. Luke’s covered market he was a familiar and redoubtable figure. Among the salespeople who stood the market was a wrinkled, hardy old potato-woman from the other side of Moorthorne: every Saturday the miser bested her in their higgling-match, and nearly every Saturday she scornfully threw at him the same joke: “Get thee along to th’ post-office, Master Terrick:4 happen they’ll give thee sixpenn’orth o’ stamps for fivepence ha’penny.” He seldom failed to laugh heartily at this.
At dinner the girls could perceive that the shadow of his displeasure had slightly lifted, though he kept a frowning silence. Expert in all the symptoms of his moods, they knew that in a few hours he would begin to talk again, at first in monosyllables, and then in short detached sentences. An intimation of relief diffused itself through the house like a hint of spring in February.
These domestic upheavals followed always the same course, and Anna had learnt to suffer the later stages of them with calmness and even with impassivity. Henry Mynors had not called. She supposed that her father had expected him to call for the answer which she had forgotten to give him, and she had a hope that he would come in the afternoon: once again she had the idea that something definite and satisfactory might result if she could only see him—that she might, as it were, gather inspiration from the mere sight of his face. After dinner, while the girls were washing the dinner things in the scullery, Agnes’s quick ear caught the sound of voices in the parlour. They listened. Mynors had come. Mr. Tellwright must have seen him from the front window and opened the door to him before he could ring.
“It’s him,” said Agnes, excited.
“Who?” Anna asked, self-consciously.
“Mr. Mynors, of course,” said the child sharply, making it quite plain that this affectation could not impose on her for a single instant.
“Anna!” It was Mr. Tellwright’s summons, through the parlour window. She dried her hands, doffed her apron, and went to the parlour, animated by a thousand fears and expectations. Why was she to be included in the colloquy?
Mynors rose at her entrance and greeted her with conspicuous deference, a deference which made her feel ashamed.
“Hum!” the old man growled, but he was obviously content. “I gave Anna a message for ye yesterday, Mr. Mynors, but her forgot to deliver it, wench-like. Ye might ha’ been saved th’ trouble o’ calling. Now as ye’re here, I’ve summat for tell ye. It’ll be Anna’s money as’ll go into that concern o’ yours. I’ve none by me; in fact, I’m a’most fast for brass, but her’ll have as near two thousand as makes no matter in a month’s time, and her says her’ll go in wi’ you on th’ strength o’ my recommendation.”
This speech was evidently a perfect surprise for Henry Mynors. For a moment he seemed to be at a loss; then his face gave candid expression to a feeling of intense pleasure.
“You know all about this business then, Miss Tellwright?”
She blushed. “Father has told me something about it.”
“And are you willing to be my partner?”
“Nay, I did na’ say that,” Tellwright interrupted. “It’ll be Anna’s money, but i’ my name.”
“I see,” said Mynors gravely. “But if it is Miss Anna’s money, why should not she be the partner?” He offered one of his courtly diplomatic smiles.
“Oh—but—” Anna began in deprecation.
Tellwright laughed. “Ay!” he said, “why not? It’ll be experience for th’ lass.”
“Just so,” said Mynors.
Anna stood silent, like a child who is being talked about. There was a pause.
“Would you care for that arrangement, Miss Tellwright?”
“Oh, yes,” she said.
“I shall try to justify your confidence. I needn’t say that I think you and your father will have no
