“Well, Mrs. Holl,” Frank said, rising, “we are very much obliged to you for your story, but we must not keep you any longer. We will call again and arrange matters with you when Evan lets me know whether he accepts my offer.”
“And I will be sure to forward the books to you to-morrow. Good bye.”
And greatly to Mrs. Holl’s astonishment, the two young men shook hands warmly with her, as they took their leave.
“Bill, dear Bill, I do wish you would give up these Chartist goings on. No good will come of it.”
The speaker was a pretty young woman, who would have been prettier, had not premature care traced deep lines on her forehead, which Time, more gentle, would not have done for years to come yet. Her dress was very poor, and the scanty furniture of the attic in which she and her husband lived, and the small embers of the fire over which a few potatoes were boiling for their meal, seemed to say that want had helped care in its work.
Bessy White had been the belle of her native village down in quiet Hampshire. A wilful, merry, coquettish little beauty, knowing her power, and using it; with a bright, fresh colour, and a happy ringing laugh. It seemed hardly possible that four years could have changed her to the thin, pale, careworn woman she now was. Yet it was only four years since William Holl, a journeyman joiner, had on his wanderings passed through the village, and had stopped to do some work at the Squire’s, which had occupied him for several weeks. There he saw her, fell in love with her, and carried her off in triumph from his rustic rivals, who, with the village in general, had marvelled much what pretty Bessy White could see to fancy in the pale, quiet, young carpenter, when so many stout young fellows were laying their hearts at her feet. However, Bessy had laughed at their wonder and their warnings, had gaily married, and gone off with her husband to busy London. For the first two or three years of her marriage her life was as happy as she had hoped that it would be. About eighteen months after she had come up to London, she had a baby, which only lived a few weeks; but this had been the only cloud to her happiness. Her husband earned good wages, for he was a capital workman, and was sober and industrious. He loved his wife fondly, and was very proud of her, and of the prettily-furnished neat little rooms which constituted his home.
