I am ashamed to confess that I actually paid her a pound for
this brass pin! The purchase was partly an indication of my temperament,
which could never let an opportunity pass away irrevocably without a
struggle, and always apprehended 'Some day or other I'll reproach myself
for having neglected it!' and partly a record of the trepidations of that
period of my life. At all events I had her pin, and she my pound, and I
venture to say I was the gladder of the two.
She stood on the road-side bank courtseying and smiling, the first
enchantress I had encountered, and I watched the receding picture, with its
patches of firelight, its dusky groups and donkey carts, white as skeletons
in the moonlight, as we drove rapidly away.
They, I suppose, had a wild sneer and a merry laugh over my purchase, as
they sat and ate their supper of stolen poultry, about their fire, and were
duly proud of belonging to the superior race.
Mary Quince, shocked at my prodigality, hinted a remonstrance.
'It went to my heart, Miss, it did. They're such a lot, young and old, all
alike thieves and vagabonds, and many a poor body wanting.
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