You-liked but you were a tramp all the same,
nothing but a common tramp, and that I ought to be ashamed of myself.
'You've disgraced the family,' that's what he said, but I don't care - I
shall never forget it, the morning you went away and took me up in your
arms and kissed me."
Here was a revelation! It saddened me, and I made no reply although I
think she expected one. And so after a minute or two of uncomfortable
silence she repeated that she would never forget it. For all the time I
was thinking of another and sweeter one who was also a person of
importance in her own home and village over a dozen miles away.
In thoughtful silence we finished our talk; then there were lights and
tea and general conversation; and if Millicent had intended returning
to the subject she found no opportunity then or afterwards.
It was better so, seeing that the other character possessed my whole
heart. She was not intellectual; no one would have said of her,
for example, that she would one day blossom into a second Emily Bronte;
that to future generations her wild moorland village would be the
Haworth of the West. She was perhaps something better - a child of earth
and sun, exquisite, with her flossy hair a shining chestnut gold, her
eyes like the bugloss, her whole face like a flower or rather like a
ripe peach in bloom and colour; we are apt to associate these delicious
little beings with flavours as well as fragrances.
