Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1896-06-26

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with the squire and the clergyman, be
held his head higher than ever. If he
had been the squire himself he could
not have been more indignant at the
idea of his daughter wishing to wed
with the son of one of his own cottagers
Jack Saunders had been school.
mate of Mary's at the village school.
For some years past he had been away,
first serving his apprenticeship as
carpenter and then working as jour-
neyman at the same trade. Chance
had given him few months work
near his old home, and in that time
the friendship between the two had
been renewed.
After Jack had gone, Mary
went back to her old life uncomplain-
ingly. It never occurred to her to
neglect her duties, or be "saucy with
her meals" as protest against the
hardness of her lot; there was no
shadow on her broad and kindly face
to touch her fathers compassion.
Once, about a month after she had
parted from her lover, there came q
sore trial to her obedience.
She was stamping and sorting the
morning letters, when she found one
among them addressed to herself. 1t
bore a Birmingham postmark, and
Mary thrust it into her pocket with q
guilty look toward her father. All
through the day it lay there unopened,
heavy load upon her conscience, it lis
true, but joy deep and thrilling as
we'll, the like of which she had never
known before.
When evening came, and she could
leave the house an hour or two un-
noticed, it was towards the sea she
went, to read her letter on the same
spot where she and Jack had parted.
It was then that Mary felt that her
father had laid tax on her heavier
than she could bear. If she might
have letters such as this now and then
life would he very easy, she thought,
but there was no need to ask her
fathers consent to that she knew too
we'll what his answer would be, and to
get them unknown to him would be
well-nigh impossible.
Mary was simple. and truthful by
nature, and deception of any kind
would have been very painful to her
yet, perhaps, if it could be done with
out her fathers knowledge, she might
have consented to this correspondence
for the gleam of hope that it held
out was very sweet to her. But
when she thought of, the inevitable
discovery, and the tempest of wrath
she would have to face, she could not
hesitate. That night, in her room she
wrote her answer to Jack, repeating
that she could not "go again father"
and begging him to write no more.
After this the monotony of her life
went on unbroken. She formed hab-
| it of walking out towards the sea on
fine evenings, and sitting on the pile
of stones where she and Jack had sat
together for their last talk. Sometimes
she brought her knitting with her, but
more often she sat watching the chang
ing color of the sea, and the white
winged vessels passing to and fro.
1t would have surprised her very
much to be told that she was romantic,
yet it is true that when she was not
thinking of her schooldays with Jack,
or of their shy courtship and brief spell
of happiness, she was weaving impos-
sible daydreams of how her father
might relent, or how Jack, become sud-
denly wealthy and famous, should
come to claim her, with credentials
that not even a landed proprietor and
poor-law guardian could deny.
1t gave the girl curious pang now
and then to be shaken out of her dream
ing by the passing ofa pair of lovers in
their evening stroll. She could not
have told why the sight of this made
her own trouble more present to her,
nor why it was 80 impossible to take
up the broken thread of her reverie.
She knew nothing about self-analysis,
and could only dry her eyes and hasten
back to the village to get her fathers
supper, hoping the while he would not
notice how the even red of her cheek
had spread over nose and eyebrow.
Micklethwaite, for his part, was
pleased with his daughters obedience
in his own hard way, and was at no
trouble to consider moods and feelings.
Ten years had passed since Jack
Saunders had gone to work at Bir-
mingham, and many changes had come
about. Jack was a good workman,
and, after being foreman for three
years, had been taken into partnership
by his master. The firm was at work
on some cottages they had had built
outside the town as speculation, and
one of these Jack was finishing for his
own occupation, for he was about to
be married. He had only been home
once in the ten years, on five days
trip in Whitsun-week, and then he had
not seen Mary, who was away visiting
some cousins. Since then his parents
had died, and his connection with
Daignton had ceased.
l.