It's a lonely place, is Loudacott, and it wasn't many folks that we saw
there when I was a child; but when I growed up into a comely maid, and
men seed me now and again to market or fairing time, they began to come
a-courting; for 'twasn't me only that they would get, but forty acre of
land with me, if father liked mun well. There was more came than you'd
a think for, plenty enough to turn the head of a silly maid; and there
was one that father favoured particular, for he had land close nigh by
Loudacott, but I didn't like he--never could. There wasn't but one
that pleased me, and that was Jan Dart. You know his old mother that
lives to Ashacombe, or used to live, for they tell me that she's
a-dying. She couldn't never abide the name of me, Jan's mother
couldn't; and father, he couldn't abide Jan. For his father hadn't
been more than a servant with the old squire, nor his mother neither,
and Jan, he'd a been bound 'prentice to a shoemaker, and wasn't long
out of his time; while we was the Clatworthys to Loudacott.
"Well, the men come, and I was well enough pleased to keep mun dancing
round me, and poor Jan with the rest of mun, for you may depend that I
wasn't going to let he go. I'd a-been a bit spoiled, for my mother had
had a boy and another maid besides me, and fine children too, as I've
been told; but she'd a-lost the both of them o' smallpox, so that there
wasn't but me left.
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