“I tell you what, Mr Weir, this here’s a serious business. And it seems to me it’s not shipshape o’ you to go on with that plane o’ yours, when we’re talkin’ about parson.” “Well, Old Rogers, I meant no offence. Here goes. NOW, what have you to say? Though if it’s offence to parson you’re speakin’ of, I know, if I were parson, who I’d think was takin’ the greatest liberty, me wi’ my plane, or you wi’ your fancies.” “Belay there, and hearken.” So Old Rogers went into as many particulars as he thought fit, to prove that his suspicion as to the state of my mind was correct; which particulars I do not care to lay in a collected form before my reader, he being in no need of such a summing up to give his verdict, seeing the parson has already pleaded guilty. When he had finished, “Supposing all you say, Old Rogers,” remarked Thomas, “I don’t yet see what WE’VE got to do with it. Parson ought to know best what he’s about.” “But my daughter tells me,” said Rogers, “that Miss Oldcastle has no mind to marry Captain Everard. And she thinks if parson would only speak out he might have a chance.” Weir made no reply, and was silent so long, with his head bent, that Rogers grew impatient. “Well, man, ha’ you nothing to say now—not for your best friend—on earth, I mean—and that’s parson? It may seem a small matter to you, but it’s no small matter to parson.” “Small to me!” said Weir, and taking up his tool, a constant recourse with him when agitated, he began to plane furiously. Old Rogers now saw that there was more in it than he had thought, and held his peace and waited. After a minute or two of fierce activity, Thomas lifted up a face more white than the deal board he was planing, and said, “You should have come to the point a little sooner, Old Rogers.” He then laid down his plane, and went out of the workshop, leaving Rogers standing there in bewilderment. But he was not gone many minutes. He returned with a letter in his hand. “There,” he said, giving it to Rogers. “I can’t read hand o’ write,” returned Rogers. “I ha’ enough ado with straight-foret print But I’ll take it to parson.” “On no account,” returned Thomas, emphatically “That’s not what I gave it you for. Neither you nor parson has any right to read that letter; and I don’t want either of you to read it. Can Jane read writing?” “I don’t know as she can, for, you see, what makes lasses take to writin’ is when their young man’s over the seas, leastways not in the mill over the brook.” “I’ll be back in a minute,” said Thomas, and taking the letter from Rogers’s hand, he left the shop again. He returned once more with the letter sealed up in an envelope, addressed to Miss Oldcastle. “Now, you tell your Jane to give that to Miss Oldcastle from me—mind, from ME; and she must give it into her own hands, and let no one else see it. And I must have it again. Mind you tell her all that, Old Rogers.”