“Couldn’t she?” returned Locke sardonically. “She run fast enough out o’ my way—I know that. Aye, she showed as clean a pair o’ heels as a maid need wish to. An’ so she said she’d take to me again if I was to get a glass eye, did she?”
“She said she’d think on’t,” returned the girl cautiously.
Tom took off his hat and bent down till his face was nearly on a level with Lizzie’s.
“Look here, Lizzie Fripp,” he said authoritatively; “you be a trewth-tellin’ maid, an’ ye’ll gi’e me a straightfor’ard answer. Tell me plain! I was reckoned a fairish good-lookin’ chap till now, but this accident has spiled my looks for me. Tell me the trewth. Am I such an object that any maid would run away from me, or is it jest Susan that’s extra pertic’lar?”
Lizzie raised her honest brown eyes and gazed at him steadily.
“You’re not an object, Mr. Locke,” she said thoughtfully. “Dear no, not at all an object. I think a body ’ud soon get used to—to one side bein’ a little different from t’other. But some maids takes notions, ye see. My mother said she never could abide red hair. If father’d hev been a red-haired man she’d never ha’ married him. Now _I_ think ’tis much the same as any other colour.”
Tom slowly straightened himself. A smile was hovering about his mouth.
“You think I’d look better with a glass eye?” he inquired.
“Well,” returned Lizzie dispassionately, “I think it ’ud be very nice for Sundays, Mr. Locke. Sundays an’ market-days, or when ye was goin’ for a drive in the trap, or such like.”
“I see,” said Tom, meditatively stroking his beard. “P’r’aps I’ll talk to doctor about it.”
“Oh, do,” she urged eagerly. “I d’ ’low Susan ’ll be real pleased.”
“Ah!” said Tom. “Be ye goin’ home now, Lizzie?”
“Oh, an’ did ye? Well, ’twas very kindly done of you. Come, I’ll walk a piece of the way with you.”
He walked a piece of the way—indeed, he walked all the way; and Lizzie thought within herself, as they trudged along, that if any stranger met them who did not know them, he might have taken them for sweethearts; for they walked in almost unbroken silence, just as courting people did, and Tom kept very close to her, and when they came to a rough piece of road he supported her by the elbow, just as he might have done if she had been Susan.