"He will soon go away, no doubt."
"I don't think so." Grace did not say "Why?" and Grammer hesitated. At
last she went on: "Don't tell your father or mother, miss, if I let you
know a secret."
Grace gave the required promise.
"Well, he talks of buying me; so he won't go away just yet."
"Buying you!--how?"
"Not my soul--my body, when I'm dead. One day when I was there
cleaning, he said, 'Grammer, you've a large brain--a very large organ
of brain,' he said. 'A woman's is usually four ounces less than a
man's; but yours is man's size.' Well, then--hee, hee!--after he'd
flattered me a bit like that, he said he'd give me ten pounds to have
me as a natomy after my death. Well, knowing I'd no chick nor chiel
left, and nobody with any interest in me, I thought, faith, if I can be
of any use to my fellow-creatures after I'm gone they are welcome to my
services; so I said I'd think it over, and would most likely agree and
take the ten pounds. Now this is a secret, miss, between us two. The
money would be very useful to me; and I see no harm in it."
"Of course there's no harm. But oh, Grammer, how can you think to do
it? I wish you hadn't told me."
"I wish I hadn't--if you don't like to know it, miss. But you needn't
mind. Lord--hee, hee!--I shall keep him waiting many a year yet, bless
ye!"
"I hope you will, I am sure."
The girl thereupon fell into such deep reflection that conversation
languished, and Grammer Oliver, taking her candle, wished Miss Melbury
good-night. The latter's eyes rested on the distant glimmer, around
which she allowed her reasoning fancy to play in vague eddies that
shaped the doings of the philosopher behind that light on the lines of
intelligence just received. It was strange to her to come back from
the world to Little Hintock and find in one of its nooks, like a
tropical plant in a hedgerow, a nucleus of advanced ideas and practices
which had nothing in common with the life around. Chemical
experiments, anatomical projects, and metaphysical conceptions had
found a strange home here.
Thus she remained thinking, the imagined pursuits of the man behind the
light intermingling with conjectural sketches of his personality, till
her eyes fell together with their own heaviness, and she slept.