x.

"Why, you doan't mane to say you've a-got _he?_" exclaimed Joan, her
anger completely giving way to her amazement. "Well, I never! after all
this long whiles, and us a-tryin' to stop un, too!--Eve, do 'ee see
he's got the letter you writ, kisses and all?"

"Joan!" exclaimed Eve in a tone of mingled reproof and annoyance, while
Jerrem made a feint of pressing the impressions to his lips, casting
the while a look in Eve's direction, which Joan intercepting, she said,
"Awh! iss I would, seeing they'm so much mine as Eve's, and you doan't
know t'other from which."

"That's all you can tell," said Jerrem.

"Iss, and all you can tell, too," replied Joan; adding, as the frown on
his face betokened rising anger, "There, my dear, you'd best step
inside wi' me and get a drop more o' your mornin's physic, I reckon."

"Physic?" growled Jerrem. "I don't want no physic--leastwise, no more
than I've had from you already."

"Glad to hear it," said Joan. "When you change your mind--which, depend
on it, 'ull be afore long--you'll find me close to hand.--I must make
up a few somethin's for this evenin'," she said, addressing Eve, "in
case any of 'em drops in. Adam's gone off," she added, "I don't know
where, nor he neither till his work's done."

"Might just as well have saved hisself the trouble," growled Jerrem.

"No, now, he mightn't," replied Joan. "There's spurrits enough to wan
place and t'other to float a Injyman in, and the sooner 'tis got the
rids of the better, for 'twill be more by luck than good management if
all they kegs is got away unseen."

"Oh, of course Adam's perfect," sneered Jerrem. Then, catching sight of
Eve's face as he watched Joan go into the kitchen, he added with a
desponding sigh, "I only wish I was; but the world's made for some: I
s'pose the more they have the more they get."

Eve did not answer: perhaps she had not heard, as she was just now
engaged in shifting her position so as to escape the dazzling rays of
the sun, which came pouring down on her head. The movement seemed to
awaken her to a sense of the day's unusual brightness, and, getting up,
she went to the window and looked out. "Isn't it like summer?" she
said, speaking more to herself than to Jerrem. "I really must say I
should like to have gone somewhere for a walk."

The words, simple in themselves, flung in their tone a whole volume of
reproach at Adam, for to Eve's exacting mind there could be no
necessity urgent enough to tak