But it was not from lack of suitors. There were
at least half a dozen stalwart young croppers who would gladly have
paid court to her had there been the smallest sign on her part of
willingness to accept their attentions; but Polly, though bright
and cheerful and pleasant to all, afforded to none of them an
opportunity for anything approaching intimacy.
On Sundays, the times alone when their occupations enabled the
youth of Varley to devote themselves to attentions to the maidens
they favored, Mary Powlett was not to be found at home after
breakfast, for, having set everything in readiness for dinner,
she always started for Marsden, taking little Susan with her, and
there spent the day with the woman who had even more than Eliza
Marner been her mother. She had, a month after his wife's death,
fought a battle with Luke and conquered. The latter had, in pursuance
of the plans he had originally drawn up for her, proposed that she
should go into service at Marsden.
"Oi shall miss thee sorely, Polly," he said; "and oi doan't disguise
it from thee, vor the last year, lass, thou hast been the light o'
this house, and oi couldna have spared ye. But oi ha' always fixed
that thou shouldst go into service at Marsden--Varley is not fit
vor the likes o' ye. We be a rough lot here, and a drunken; and
though oi shall miss thee sorely for awhile, oi must larn to do
wi'out thee.
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