Chapter VIII: Part 8

As they stood motionless the little creature did indeed come frolicking downwards from bough to bough, pausing to glance at them, leaping away in feigned terror, returning for closer inspection, then, evidently deciding that they were not, and could never have been, alive, and were, in consequence, not dangerous, sitting up, chattering, a yard or two above their heads. He was presently joined by a friend, or it might be a rival; a lively discussion ensued, a mad scamper, a protracted chase, the two finally disappearing in the inner depths of the wood.

“Let’s go,” said Alice.

She had been amused and interested, but felt nevertheless somewhat disappointed. This was the strangest courting she had ever heard of: it seemed hardly worth while to have walked three miles on a Sunday afternoon merely to watch the antics of a couple of squirrels. But Adam was perfectly happy; for the first time since he had left the Warren he found himself in his element and at ease.

“If you do know how to treat ’em, birds and beasts is tame enough,” he remarked. “There, the very varmint ’ull be friendly wi’ you. There was a wold weasel yonder in the Warren what did use to have reg’lar games wi’ me. He knowed I were arter him, d’ye see, and he were that cunnin’ he did lead I a dance for months and months. I do ’low the creature ’j’yed it. When I did take en out o’ the gin at last he did grin up in my face as if he were a-sayin’ ‘ye be upsides wi’ me at last, wold chap!’--I could a’most have found it in my heart to let him go, but I dursn’t, along o’ my father. Hush, look!”

A green woodpecker was climbing up the tree near which they had halted; the pair watched him until he took wing, and then pursued their way. Alice’s heart was sinking more and more; she yawned once or twice in a frank, undisguised way, and walked ever more slowly.

“Hark!” cried Adam jubilantly, “the cuckoo. ’Tis the first time I’ve heard en--he be late to-year.”

“Have ye got any money about ye?” inquired Alice eagerly. “Turn it round quick, if ye have.”

“What for?”

“Why, for luck, sure. Didn’t ye know that? You must turn your money first time you do hear cuckoo cry so as you’ll have plenty more to-year.”

Adam’s fingers dropped from the waistcoat pocket where they had been vaguely fumbling.

“What’s money to me?” he muttered, as, with head thrown back and brows frowning with eagerness, he followed the course of certain black specks which at that moment were flying high over the wood.

“Wild duck!” he remarked presently.

Alice turned on him in desperation.

“Well, I be a-goin’ for to sit down,” she remarked. “I’ve a-brought a bit o’ summat to eat wi’ me.”

She produced from the little basket which she had carried sundry slices of cake which she offered to Baverstock.

“I did bring seed-cake a-purpose because you did say you liked it best,” she observed in an expectant tone. But Adam’s dark eyes continued to rove even while he ate, and his only response was inconsequent enough:--

“Don’t it taste good out o’ door?”

Alice edged away from him and munched in silence, and presently tears of mortification welled into her eyes. Adam, returning on tiptoe from a cautious expedition to inspect a nuthatch’s nest in the bole of a tree, suddenly took note of her woeful expression, and paused aghast.

“What be cryin’ for, maidie?” he asked in so kind a tone, that the tears rolled down upon her cheeks, and a little unexpected sob burst forth.

“I don’t know,” she murmured; then, petulantly: “I wish I hadn’t come!”

Adam’s face fell.

“Don’t ’ee like being here? I thought ye’d be so pleased.”

The sense of injury now overcame maidenly reserve.

“You do never say a word to I. You don’t so much as look at I. I mid be a stock or a stone,” she added passionately.

Adam surveyed her with dawning comprehension; during the silence that intervened the rustling of the leaves could be heard, the distant notes of a lark circling upwards from the downs beyond the woods, the chirp of nestlings, the irrepressible laughter of a gleeful squirrel. Perhaps all this cheerful bustle of the sunshiny spring awoke in the man’s breast certain hitherto dormant instincts. He, too, was young, and love and springtime go hand-in-hand. He stooped, laid a tentative forefinger gently under Alice’s round chin, tilted it slightly, and gazed down into the tearful eyes.

“Ye mustn’t cry, my maid,” said he, and then he kissed her.

They came out of the wood as the sun was sinking, hand-in-hand as before, but walking sedately now, and with a glow upon their faces other than the glow which was dyeing the fir-boles crimson, and making the gorse flame.

Alice was in the seventh heaven, and as for Adam, perhaps he too had learnt a new secret in the greenwood, the existence of which had been hitherto unguessed.

“Well?” said Mrs. Cluett as the couple parted by the yard door.

“Well,” returned Alice, with a conscious laugh.

“You do seem to be gettin’ along,” pursued the mother.

“E-es, we be gettin’ along,” conceded Alice, but no more would she say.

She was subsequently forced to own to herself, however, that they did not get on very fast. Adam was incomprehensible to her, and frequently exasperating; and more than once he seemed puzzled and irritated by things that Alice said and did. Mrs. Cluett, for her part, blamed them both with equal impartiality. Now she would aver that Alice was a simpleton, now that Adam was a fool. Was the thing to be or was it not to be? she wanted to know; even if it was to be Mrs. Cluett was not sure that she cared so very much about it; but if it was not to be, there was no manner of use in Alice wasting her time.

Meanwhile the couple walked together frequently, talked little, and quarrelled more than once. On that warm June night, for instance, when Adam, rolling himself in his blanket, stretched himself in the orchard to sleep under the stars, Alice’s indignation was to the full as great as her mother’s; while the day the girl refused Adam’s offer of pine-cones for her fire, on the ground that they popped like pistols and smelt of turpentine, her lover’s resentment had flashed forth in words fierce and strong.

“You do never seem to care for the things what I like,” he summed up.

To each the other was an unknown quantity; the mutual attraction was almost counterbalanced by a shyness begotten of the knowledge of being misunderstood.

The crisis came one summer’s night--a night long remembered in the village, for there broke such a storm over the land as had not been known, the old folks said, since the days of their childhood. A brooding and oppressive stillness reigned at first, and then came lightning that seemed to split the heavens, and thunder that roared like a thousand menacing cannons. Alice sat crouched in a corner with a face as white as a sheet and her fingers in her ears; and Mrs. Cluett hurried round the house, closing doors and windows, and fastening shutters. As she was about to shut the door leading to the yard, a sudden flash revealed to her a motionless figure standing without, a few paces away.

“Dear heart alive! ’Tis never you, Adam.”

She had seen his face transfigured in the momentary gleam, the eyes exultant, the lips parted in rapture.

“Isn’t it grand?” came Adam’s voice, tremulous with excitement, as the darkness enfolded him once more, and the mystic artillery crashed over their heads.

“The chap’s daft!” exclaimed Mrs. Cluett. “Come in this minute. You’ll be struck dead afore me eyes. We don’t want no carpses in the house, do us, Alice?”

But Alice made no response.

“Lard save us!” ejaculated Mrs. Cluett, as a new flash lit up all the surrounding country, revealing the cattle huddled together in the adjacent fields, the hedges, the trees, Adam’s face, eager, enraptured, as before. She darted out and seized him by the arm.

“Come in, I tell ’ee,” she cried. “I’ll not have ye standing there no more.”

As he turned towards her half-dazed, she dragged him in, and had shut and bolted the door before he recovered his wits. The air was stifling inside the house; the paraffin lamp reeked; the gusts of storm-wind which arose every now and then puffed volumes of acrid wood smoke down the chimney.

“A man mid choke here,” growled Adam.

“To bed wi’ ye then!” cried Mrs. Cluett indignantly. “Us be a-goin’ too--’tis late enough.”

She took up the lamp as she spoke, and roused Alice by a jerk of the sleeve. Adam went creaking upstairs, and threw himself dressed upon his bed. The atmosphere of his little attic-room, sun-baked as it had been through all that breathless day, was like that of a furnace; he felt his brain reel and was oppressed almost to suffocation. The storm continued, flash after flash playing on his narrow window; he could see the tip of his one fir-tree, now motionless, transfixed as it were, now swaying in a puff of wind that died away as suddenly as it came.

The house was very silent now, and permeated by the odour of Mrs. Cluett’s recently extinguished lamp. Adam sat up gasping. He thought of the Warren--of the close-growing trees stretching away about the free and happy man who dwelt beneath them. Once he, too, had stood with the woods wrapping him round, and the stars of heaven over his head. Tewley must look grand to-night. As he thought of it the dark shadowy forms of the trees seemed to press upon him; he could hear their deep breathing, and share their expectancy.

Ha! there was a flash. How it would light up the beeches and play among the pines. Now the thunder! it would roar and reverberate among those billowing trees. The rain would come soon. First there would be a rush of wind, and ash and oak and beech would rustle and shiver, and the larches sway down all their slender length. And then, while the trees were bending and rocking, the rain would come--the cold, heavy, glorious rain. Adam caught his breath as he thought of it--how it would come down, hissing among the leaves, splashing on the hot ground! How good the wet earth would smell, every strand of moss and fibre of grass adding its own spicy fragrance.

He leaped from his bed and almost at the same moment the tree outside his window was caught by a whirling wind and snapped. Then something seemed to snap, too, in Adam’s brain and he laughed aloud. What was he doing there, in that suffocating room, when he was free to go that moment, if he chose, to Tewley Woods? What should hold him back--what should keep him? If he made haste he might yet reach the Warren in time for the rain.

In another moment he was out of the house, and when the next flash of lightning came it revealed a flying figure scudding along the whiteness of the road.

* * * * *

Alice cried bitterly over the defection of her wild man of the woods, but she consoled herself in time, and took a mate more to her mind, a practical person who sowed cabbages in the flower-border, and considered the view of the new brewery the finest in the neighbourhood.

But Adam Baverstock had passed for ever out of her life; as silently as he had come from the shadow of the trees into the spring sunshine, so had he vanished in the summer storm.

THE HOME-COMING OF DADA.

“I knew he was bound to be one of the first,” said Mrs. Bunce triumphantly. “Why, he’ve a-been out there ever since the war broke out. Two year and seven month he’ve a-been there--and the hardships he’s been through, and the fightin’ he’s done! There, I can’t think how ever the Government had the heart to keep en out so long.”

“There’s others what have been out jist same as he have,” returned her neighbour plaintively. “My Jan now--such a good boy as he be, too!--well, he’ve a-been out there months and months, and he’ve a-been in hospital!”

“As for fightin’,” put in the shrewd-faced little man who formed the third party to the discussion, and whose opinion carried weight in the neighbourhood, for his vocation of carrier enabled him to pick up many items of news during his daily round, “as for fightin’, Mrs. Bunce, I don’t mean to make little o’ your husband, but there bain’t nothin’ wonderful about him doin’ a lot o’ fightin’. They all done that--’twas what they were sent out for, and not a bit more credit to any of ’em nor for me to go joggin’ along behind the wold horse here.”

Both women reddened, and turned upon him angrily.

“If ye do think such things, ye did ought to be ashamed to say ’em,” cried Mrs. Andrews. “’Eroes--’tis what they be every man of ’em, Mr. Bright; and you did ought to know it, seein’ as ’twas wrote up plain over the very Corn Exchange the day as peace was declared. ‘All Honour to Our ’Eroes,’ it said, in them little coloured lamps so ’andsome as it could be; and bain’t there a song about ‘they’re ’eroes every one’?”

“And I’m sure ye can’t say,” chimed in little Mrs. Bunce, nodding her curly head emphatically, “as it be the same thing for a man to sit snug in his cart behind the quietest old harse in Darset as it is to leave your wife and your home and--and everything, and to go riskin’ your life among Boers and Blacks in them wild parts out abroad.”

“E-es,” agreed her neighbour, making common cause with her against the enemy, “e-es, indeed, Mrs. Bunce. And your little boy wasn’t so much as born when his dada was took away, was he? Many a time, I dare say, you did think to yourself as he’d never see the face of his child. I d’ ’low he thought the same hisself goin’ off, poor fellow! Ye’ll agree that was a bit hard on the man, Mr. Bright, so little credit as ye be willin’ to allow our soldiers. Ye’ll agree ’twas hard on the man to go off, leavin’ his missus to get through her trouble alone, and the child the first child, too, mind ye.”

“If it had been the tenth you wouldn’t pity him so much,” said the carrier, with a dry chuckle. “There’s some as don’t think so much o’ them things. Jim Marshall, now--says I to Jim t’other day, ‘Jim,’ I says, ‘I hear you’ve got an increase to your family’; and poor Jim, he looks at me and says, ‘E-es,’ he says, ‘more hardship’.”

Chuckling sardonically, he gathered up his reins and jogged on again, the women looking after him with indignant faces.

As the green “shed” of his van disappeared round the corner, their eyes by mutual accord reverted to each other, and Mrs. Andrews laughed disdainfully.

“’Tis a queer cranky sort of body,” she remarked; “a bachelor man. What can you expect?”

Mrs. Bunce’s face was still pink with wrath, but she smiled upon the other woman.

“I should think your Jan did ought to come home soon now,” she said handsomely; gratitude for Mrs. Andrews’ timely sympathy causing her to be for the moment almost willing to admit there might be another soldier of some merit in the British Army besides Private William Bunce.

“I’m sure I hope so,” responded her neighbour rather dismally. “You are safe to get your husband back next week, anyhow.”

“Next week,” echoed Nellie Bunce joyfully. “Yes, he says in his last letter they was to start in a week, and I’ve a-counted up the time, and he did ought to land at Southampton Saturday week.”

“I d’ ’low ye’ll be busy gettin’ all ready for him,” said the older woman, falling into an easy attitude with her hands on her hips, the better to contemplate her pretty neighbour.

“I d’ ’low I be,” responded Nellie, enthusiastically. “I be goin’ to give en the best welcome I can, ye mid be sure. I be cleanin’ up the house fro’ top to bottom, and I be goin’ to paper the kitchen. I’ve bought paper already; I reckon I could easy do it myself; the wall aint so very high and the room bain’t too big neither.”

“’Tis a stiffish job for a woman though,” returned Mrs. Andrews, dubiously. “If Andrews wasn’t so bad with the lumbagey, I’d get en to lend ye a hand; but he’s that stiff, poor man, he can scarcely so much as turn hisself in bed.”

“Oh, I’ll manage,” returned Mrs. Bunce, nodding brightly. “I’m a great one for contrivin’, and ’t’ull be summat to tell Bill as I’ve a-done it myself.”

“It’ll take you all your time,” protested Mrs. Andrews, and they parted.

During the ensuing days Nellie was indeed up to her eyes in work, carrying out vigorously her plan of cleaning and polishing the house from top to bottom. Baby Billy, who had hitherto considered himself a person of very great importance, found himself hustled hither and thither as he had never been in the whole of his existence, a period extending over about thirty months.

On one particular afternoon, when every washable article in the house was in Nellie’s tub, he was bidden to play out of doors, and finding the maternal eye less on the alert than usual, surreptitiously opened the garden gate and wandered to the forbidden precincts of the lane.

He trotted along for nearly a quarter of a mile, until he reached a particularly delectable corner graced by a large rubbish-heap, which he proceeded to investigate with huge satisfaction, carrying one treasure after another over the way, sitting down to examine it, and immediately rolling on to his legs again to procure some yet more coveted object.

At last, however, he secured two prizes, than which nothing more desirable could be imagined, and with a sigh of satisfaction toddled for the last time across the lane and sat down to enjoy them at his leisure. The broken jam-pot was immediately filled with sand, while the rusty knife, grasped by its fragmentary handle, could be used in a variety of ways--so Billy discovered--as a spade, as a saw, as a chopper.

He was engaged in mincing a dock leaf very small on a flat stone, his mouth opening and shutting in accompaniment to his labours, when he was suddenly hailed by somebody who had abruptly turned the corner of the lane, somebody who was probably on his way from the town.

“Hello!” cried this somebody.

“Hello!” responded Billy, pausing with his knife poised in mid-air and looking up with a pair of very big and very blue eyes. He had to tilt his head quite a long way back to do so, for the newcomer was tall. Billy was a little startled; to begin with the newcomer was a man, and he was not sure that he liked men--they cracked whips sometimes, and spoke loud and gruff, particularly when, as occasionally happened, Billy chanced to run across the road immediately in front of their horses; then he had funny brown clothes--nobody that Billy had ever seen wore clothes like that; and he had a brown face too, a face so very, very brown that it gave his blue eyes a strange look. Billy was secretly a good deal frightened, but being a soldier’s son he only clutched his knife the harder and said, “Hello!” again, as the stranger continued to look at him without speaking.

“I rather think I ought to know you, my lad,” said the man at last, in a queer quavering voice. “I’d swear by that little cocked nose. What’s your name, eh?”

“Billy,” responded the child promptly.

“Right you are!” cried the man, and he caught him up in his arms, knife and jam-pot and all. “Let’s hear the rest of it, though. Billy what?”

“I want to get down,” asserted the urchin, vigorously struggling. “I want to get down and make a pudden for my dada.”

The man grimaced, and instantly set the child upon his legs.

“Perhaps we’ve made a mistake after all,” he said; “perhaps you are some other chap’s Billy. Where does your dada live, young ’un?--tell us that.”

Billy had by this time squatted on the ground again, and was once more chopping at his dock leaf. He did not answer until the man had twice repeated his question, then he explained.

“My dada’s tummin’ home. He’s tummin’ in a ship--and a puff-puff,” he added, as an after-thought.

“Right you are,” cried the brown-faced man again, and he caught him up in his arms once more and kissed him. “I thought I’d know my little woman’s nose among a thousand, and yours is so like it as one pea is like another. Come, let’s go and look for mammy.”

Billy was at first disposed to protest, but something at once merry and tender in the man’s blue eyes disarmed suspicion; and when he presently found himself hoisted on a broad shoulder, and was thus carried at galloping speed down the lane and through the village; when, moreover, this self-constituted steed actually vaulted the garden gate, and covered the tiny path that intervened between it and the cottage door with two strides, he was not only reassured but jubilant.

They could see “mammy” bending over the wash-tub through the open kitchen door, very red in the face, very wet and draggled as to dress, and with one end of her hair straggling down; and the queer thing was that at sight of her the man suddenly came to a standstill and uttered a kind of choking cry. And then mammy turned round and dropped the shirt she had been wringing out, and fairly screamed as she came rushing across the kitchen. Then laughing and crying together she flung her arms round the brown man’s neck, heedless of the danger to which she was exposing herself from the broken jam-pot and the rusty knife which Billy was still brandishing; and kissed him, and rocked backwards and forwards with him, and seemed altogether to have taken leave of her senses.

After a moment’s breathless pause of astonishment, Billy thought it time to assert himself. He dropped his two treasures on the floor and burst into a loud wail. Then clutching hold of the newcomer’s close-cropped fair head, he endeavoured with all his might to pull it away from the curly one that was pressed so close to it. And then mammy looked up, and her eyes were all wet, but her mouth was laughing.

“You mustn’t do that, sonny,” she said. “This is dada! Dada’s come home.”

Billy was dumb with dismay and disappointment, partly at the discovery that the much-talked-of and hitherto unimagined dada was a man, partly because he was such a very brown man, but chiefly because he had arrived shorn of the glories of the ship and the puff-puff which he had understood were to accompany him. So he sat still and rather sulky on the khaki shoulder while Private Bunce explained how he had caught sight of the little chap, and how he at once “spotted” him by that little nose of his, and how disappointed he had been when for a moment he had thought it was not his Billy after all, but some other quite uninteresting Billy belonging to another fellow.

“But I found him all right,” he summed up triumphantly, “and I found you, little woman--lookin’ tip-top you are, just about! Lard, it do seem a mortal time since I left you, my girl.”

“Oh, Bill, I meant to have everything so nice for ’ee,” cried Nellie. “Dear, to think there’s nothin’ ready! I’m sure I’m not fit to be seen myself.”

She glanced regretfully towards the wash-tub. Her pink blouse was in there--the blouse Bill had always said he liked--and her lace collar and the little ruffles for her wrists. The old blue cotton gown which she wore was not only faded and patched, but soiled and almost wet through.

“You’re lookin’ just splendid though,” cried her husband. “Why, that there’s the very gown you used to wear when we went a-coortin’--I mind it well--that little wavy stripe. I used to think it the prettiest thing I ever did see. And here’s the little curl comin’ down what I used to kiss when we was a-walkin’ down by the river.”

“Oh, Bill, is it comin’ down? I wanted to be so tidy and nice. I reckoned ye was comin’ next week, ye know.”

“I come over wi’ the colonel. He come across a bit sooner nor we expected, bein’ knocked up wi’ one thing and another. ‘The sooner the better,’ thinks I.”

“Of course,” cried Nellie fervently; “the sooner the better indeed. But we be all in a caddle here. There, the window curtains and the best table-cloth and the very bed-quilt is in the tub, and I haven’t got any meat in the house! I thought Billy and me ud go a bit short this week, so’s to have a reg’lar feast when you did come home. And--and----”

“Now, don’t you fret, old girl; we hadn’t no table-cloth nor yet bed-quilts out on the veldt. And as for meat--blowed if I do care so very much for meat. But I tell ye what I would like.”

“What?” cried Nellie breathlessly.

“What I would like more nor any earthly thing,” said Bill emphatically, but with a twinkle in his eye, “is just ’taters--’taters done wi’ a bit o’ drippin’, hot and tasty, the way you did often do ’em.”

Nellie drew a long breath of relief.

“Them’s easy got,” she said jubilantly, but almost immediately her face fell again. “It do seem a poor kind o’ welcome,” she murmured, “and I----”

Private Bunce deposited his son and heir upon the floor, the better to bestow a really satisfactory embrace upon the little sunburnt woman. She was exceedingly damp and smelt very strongly of soap, but he did not seem to mind.

“Now, look here,” he said, “you couldn’t give I a better welcome nor what you’ve a-done. This here’s home--home as I did so often think of and long for; and here you be, my wold ’ooman, lookin’ just same as ever--just same as I so often seed ye in my mind, and I used to dream about ye many a time, and wake up and find mysel’ lyin’ on the sand. This here’s home and this here’s my little ’ooman--and I don’t want nothin’ else, wi’out it’s this young shaver,” he added as an after-thought.

And so, while the wash-tub steamed away unheeded in the back premises, a very merry party sat down to an impromptu meal. The ’taters were duly set forth, and Nellie, cleaned up and tidy, poured out tea, and Private Bunce cut huge slices from the crusty loaf, and declared he hadn’t had such a blow-out, no, not since he sailed from Southampton.

“To my mind, Nellie,” he cried presently, “the room do seem to look more cheerful-like wi’out the winder curtains. A body notices the paper more--the dear old paper what I did stick up for ’ee myself.”

Nellie opened her mouth as though to speak, but changed her mind and closed it again.

“I tell you what it is,” cried Private Bunce enthusiastically, “the place wouldn’t look itself wi’out that wall-paper. I wouldn’t have it changed for anything.”

Then Nellie burst out laughing and clapped her hands.

THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW.

They were cutting Farmer Fowler’s largest hayfield; it was eleven o’clock, and the men had just “knocked off” for the light meal known in those parts as “nuncheon”. A big flagon of cider was being passed round from one to the other, accompanied by goodly slices of bread and cheese. The farmer himself stood a little apart under the shade of a large elm which grew midway in the hedgerow that divided this field from its neighbour, paying a half scornful attention to the scraps of talk with which the labourers seasoned their meal. He himself was not given to self-indulgence, and inwardly chafed at the loss of this half-hour from the busiest time of the day. He had worked as hard as any of his men, and was, indeed, hardly to be distinguished from them, except by the better quality of his clothes. He was a tall, strong-looking fellow, with a face as sunburnt as any of theirs, and arms as muscular and brown. He was coatless, and wore a great chip hat; his shirt-sleeves were rolled up above his elbows, and his shirt was open at the throat. Two teams of horses stood in the shadow of the hedge, plucking at the twigs or stretching down their necks towards the grass which they could not reach; the vast field, half cut, lay shimmering before him in a blaze of light; the dome overhead glowed almost to whiteness, for the sun at this hour was intolerably hot. Yet even as the master gazed, impatiently longing for the moment when he could set his hinds to work again, he saw a figure rapidly crossing the field, looking from right to left, as though in search of some one. It was the figure of a young woman; so much he could divine from the shapely outline and springing ease of motion, but her face was at first lost to him under the deep shade of her broad-brimmed hat. She approached the group of labourers first, and made some query in a tone too low for him to distinguish the words. He saw his foreman, however, turn towards the tree beneath which he himself stood and jerk his thumb over his shoulder. Evidently the young woman had come in search of him.

She made her way towards him, walking more slowly, and indicating by her aspect a certain amount of diffidence. A comely girl--he could see that now--dark-eyed, dark-haired, and glowing with health and life.

“If you please, sir,” she began timidly, “I came--my father sent me. It’s about the taxes.”

She drew from her pocket a little blue paper of familiar aspect; the demand-note for the rates collected four times a year by the Overseers of the Branstone Union. The angry colour glowed in Jacob Fowler’s face as he twitched the paper from her hand.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he cried; “what have you got to do with it?”

“I am Isaac Masters’ daughter, of Little Branstone,” she said hastily. “He collects the rates for our parish, but he’s very ill in bed. He’s had a stroke, poor Father has, and I’m doing his work for him.”

“He should have known better than to send you to me,” returned Jacob, still wrathfully. “I never heard sich a tale i’ my life. Sendin’ a maid to collect the rates! Dally! Where will the women-folk stop?”

“Nobody else made any objection,” said the girl, with a little toss of her head. “I’ve got it all right, except yours; and Father thought I’d best come and ask for it.”

“Then you can tell your father as he did make a very great mistake,” thundered Fowler. “’Tis bad enough to be bothered about they dalled rates wi’out havin’ a woman set up over you.”

He tore the paper into fragments as he spoke, scattering them to the breeze. “There, you jist turn about and go home-along, my maid, and tell your father that’s my answer. If your father bain’t fit to do his work hissel’, he did ought to get somebody else to do it for ’en--some other man. The notion o’ sendin’ a maid! I never did hear o’ sich a piece o’ cheek!”

The girl, without waiting for the end of his indignant commentary, had turned about as he had advised, and was now walking swiftly away, her head held very high, angry tears on her thick lashes. Jacob impatiently jerked out his watch; it wanted still ten minutes of the time when work would have to be resumed. He dropped the watch into his pocket again, whistling under his breath, a good deal out of tune. Once more fragments of the men’s talk reached his unwilling ears.

“That be Bethia Masters, that be--a wonderful good maid. They d’ say the wold man ’ud be fair lost wi’out her. The Parish Council did give her leave to take his place for a bit so long as there was a chance he mid get better.” “She be a shapely maid and a vitty one.” “E-es, she’s well enough; looks a bit tired now, walkin’ i’ the heat three mile here and three mile back.” “E-es, and a sarcin’ at the end o’t,” chuckled one old fellow under his breath. “Our maister, he did gi’ ’t to her! I heerd ’en. Our maister bain’t partial to payin’ rates at any time, and he didn’t reckon for to hand over his money to a ’ooman.”

Farmer Fowler watched the retreating figure idly; it was true she was a shapely maid. How lightly and rapidly she walked: ’twas a long way, too--three miles and more. He could have wished he had not been quite so hard with her. He might have asked her to sit down and rest for a while; he might have offered her a glass of cider. He almost wondered at his own outburst of irritation as he looked back on it now, and watched the girl’s retreating form with an increasing sense of shame.

The toilsome day was over at last, the horses stabled, the men fed. Farmer Fowler was smoking the pipe of peace in his trellised porch with a pleasant sense of weariness. It was good to rest there under the honeysuckle in the twilight, and to think of how much had been accomplished during the long sunny hours which had preceded it.

The sound of a light foot caused him to raise his eyes, which he had partially closed a few moments before, and the ensuing click of the garden gate made him sit upright and crane forward his head. A girl’s figure was making its way down the little paved path, a girl’s voice once more greeted him tremulously.

“If you please, Mr. Fowler, I’m sorry to trouble you, but----”

Jacob Fowler in the evening was a different person to the Jacob Fowler of the fields; he stretched out his hand and drew her forward by the sleeve.

“Sit down, my maid,” he said; “sit ye down. You’ve a-had a longish walk, and for the second time to-day, too.”

Bethia came into the shadow of the porch; her face looked pale in the dim light, and he could see the bosom of her light dress rise and fall quickly with her rapid breath.

“If you please, sir,” she began again, “I know you’ll be vexed, but Father, he’s very much undone about the taxes. He’ll be gettin’ into trouble, he says, if he doesn’t send the money off to-morrow. He made me come back and ask you again. We’d take it very kind if you’d let us have what’s owing, sir.”

Her tremulous tone smote Jacob; stretching out his big hand once more, he patted her shoulder encouragingly.

“There, don’t ye be afeard, my maid; don’t ye. I’ll not bite ye.”

A dimple peeped out near Bethia’s lip. “You very nearly did bite me this morning,” she said.

“Nay, now,” returned Jacob, smiling beneath his thick beard, “I weren’t a-goin’ to bite ye; I was on’y barkin’, maid. Lard, if you did know I, you’d say wi’ the rest of ’em that my bark was worse nor my bite. There! what about this trifle o’ money as I owe for the rates? How much is it? Dally! I don’t know how ’tis, but it fair goes agen me to pay out money for taxes. It do seem so unfair when a man’s farm’s his own--land and house and all--for Government to go and say, ‘You’ve a-got a house, and you’ve a-got land as your father and grandfather have a-bought wi’ their own money--you must pay out for that, my lad; you must hand over whatever we pleases to ax for.’ ’Tisn’t as if they’d consult a man. If they was to say to I, ‘Mr. Fowler, you be a warmish man, and there’s a good few poor folk up i’ the union; what be you willin’ to allow us for them?’ I’d call that fair enough, and I’d tell ’em straight-out what I _was_ willin’ to ’low. But no; they goes and settles it all among theirselves wi’ never a word to nobody, and jist sends out a paper wi’out by your leave or wi’ your leave. ‘You _be_ to pay so much, whether you do like it or whether you don’t.’ ’Tain’t fair.”

“I dare say it isn’t, sir,” rejoined Bethia, very meekly; “but I’m not askin’ you on account of the Government--I’m just askin’ you for Father’s sake. He’s fretting terribly, and the doctor says he oughtn’t to upset himself.”

“Well, I don’t mind if I do make an end o’ this here business for your father’s sake, maidy; but I d’ ’low I’d jist so soon do it for yours.”

“For mine!”

“E-es, because you do ask I so pretty. I did speak a bit sharp to ye this mornin’, but it was along o’ being vexed wi’ the Government--I wasn’t really vexed wi’ _you_, my dear.”

Bethia began to laugh; her little white teeth flashed out in the most charming way--her bright eyes lit up. Jacob gazed at her with increasing favour.

“I bain’t vexed wi’ you, my dear,” he repeated affably, and then suddenly standing up, darted into the house. In a few minutes he emerged again carrying a little packet, which he handed to her.

“It be all there, wrapped up i’ that bit o’ paper; you’d best count it and see as it be right. Will ye take a glass o’ milk or summat?”

“No, thank you, Mr. Fowler; I’m very much obliged, but I think I must be getting home now. It’s growin’ dark, and my father will be anxious.”

“Wouldn’t you like nothin’?” insisted Jacob. “A posy o’ flowers or summat? There’s a-many of ’em growin’ i’ the garden, and nobody ever thinks for to pick ’em.”

“Of course not; a man does not care for such things, I know. You live all alone, don’t you, Mr. Fowler?”

“All alone, my maid, since my poor mother died. She went to the New House fifteen year ago. I’m what you mid call a reg’lar wold bachelor, I be.”

He threw out this last remark with such an obvious wish to be contradicted that Bethia hastened to return, “Not so old as that, I’m sure, Mr. Fowler. My father always speaks of you as a young man.”

“I be jist upon farty,” returned Jacob, with surprising promptitude. “Farty; that be my age. Not so old for a man.”

“Not at all old,” returned Bethia very politely; then, extending her hand, “I’ll say good-night now, sir.”

“Won’t you have a posy, then? Do. Help yourself, my maid. I’ll walk a piece o’ the way home wi’ you, and then you needn’t be afeard.”

“Very well, and thank you kindly.”

She followed him out of the porch, and up a path that led round the house to the old-fashioned garden at the rear, where there were roses, and lilies, and pinks, and sweet-williams growing in a glorious medley. She uttered little shrieks of delight, as she ran hither and thither, breaking off here a cluster of roses, there a lily-head. Jacob stalked silently behind her, clasp-knife in hand, cutting ten stalks where she had culled one, until at last a very sheaf of flowers rested in his arms.

“I’ll have to go all the way to carry it for you,” he remarked in a satisfied tone.

Bethia turned and clapped her hands together. “Oh, what a lot! I never thought you were going to get all those for me. How shall I ever thank you?”

“I’ll carry it for you,” repeated Jacob. “This way out, my dear; there’s a little gate jist here.”

A faint after-glow still lingered on the horizon, but already the silver sickle of the young moon appeared in the transparent sky. A bat circled round their heads from time to time, yet some love-lorn thrush serenaded his mate somewhere not far off, his liquid ecstatic notes filling the air, as it seemed. Great waves of perfume were wafted to Bethia’s nostrils as she paced along beside the farmer, whose tall figure towered over her, the silhouette of his face showing clear above the irregular line of hedge.

As they walked he questioned her from time to time, and learned how the girl had only come back to live with her parents within the past year, having been absent for some time teaching in a school at Dorchester.

“School-teachin’!” commented Jacob. “That be how you do speak so nice and clear. I speak awful broad myself--never had much eddication.”

“Hadn’t you?” returned Bethia, with interest.

“Nay, never had no time for that. My father, he died when I were a lad, and my mother weren’t one as could manage a farm so very well. She was a bit soft, my poor mother, and very easy taken in. So I did put shoulder to the wheel, and I mid say I’ve been a-shovin’ of it ever since.”

“I wonder you didn’t get married, Mr. Fowler,” said Bethia, with perhaps a suspicion of archness in her voice.

Jacob only grunted in reply, and an embarrassed silence fell between them, and remained unbroken till they had reached Little Branstone village.

Jacob accompanied the girl down the by-lane which led to her home, and followed her into the kitchen; there, however, he refused to stay, in spite of Mrs. Masters’ civil request that he would sit down and rest.

“Nay,” he returned gruffly, “I’ll be gettin’ home-along now; I only come so far to carry this here posy.”

Depositing his fragrant sheaf upon the table, he nodded right and left at mother and daughter, and withdrew.

“Dear! Well, to be sure! Dear heart alive, Bethia, ye could ha’ knocked I down wi’ a feather when he come marchin’ in. Lard ha’ mercy, maidy, you be clever to ha’ got Jacob Fowler for a beau. That there man do fair hate women of all sarts. There, he do never so much as look at one--and to think of him a-walkin’ all that long ways jist for to carry them flowers! He did give you the flowers, too, I suppose?”

“Yes,” returned her daughter; “but you mustn’t call him my beau, please, Mother. He only meant to be polite.”

“Well, I’m sure he did never try to be polite to any maid afore,” returned Mrs. Masters with conviction. “They do say he were crossed i’ love when he were a young ’un. Did he give ’ee the money, child?”

“Yes, Mother, and was very nice and kind altogether. I think he was sorry for Father when I told him how ill he’d been.”

“Oh, to be sure, that’s it,” agreed her mother jocosely. “All they flowers be for Father, too, I d’ ’low. Come, let’s fetch ’em up to ’en.”

Poor old Masters, ill though he was, chuckled feebly on hearing the marvellous tale, and expressed in quavering tones his belief that his daughter was a-doin’ pretty well for herself.

The girl, who had lived till now absolutely heart-whole, could not repress a certain flutter of excitement, and passed the next few days in a state of expectancy; but Jacob Fowler gave no further sign of life. Though he appeared at church on Sunday, he kept his face religiously turned away from the pretty tax-gatherer’s, and at the conclusion of the service rushed from the door without pausing to look round.

Bethia bit her lip, and instead of dallying a little, as was her custom, to chat with one or other of her acquaintance, hastened home.

“Were Farmer Fowler there, my dear?” inquired her mother.

“Yes, but he didn’t speak to me--he didn’t take a bit of notice of me. Put that notion out of your head, Mother--there’s nothing at all between him and me.”

Soon the attention of the little household was entirely absorbed by a more acute and immediate cause of trouble: poor old Masters, after a brave struggle, and in spite of the adjurations of his neighbours, found himself unable to “hold on”; he loosed his feeble grasp of life suddenly at last, and went out, as his wife sorrowfully remarked, “like the snoff of a candle.”

After the funeral was over, the question of ways and means stared the mother and daughter in the face. Mrs. Masters did a little business--a very little business--with a small general shop; it was quite insufficient to support them. Her health was not good, and Bethia was determined not to leave her; there was no opening for her as a teacher in that village, and such sums as she might earn by taking in sewing would add very little to their modest income. She resolved to make a bold appeal to the Parish Council for permission to continue to fill her father’s place.

“I could do it every bit as well as a man,” she averred. “I have done it during the last few months. The accounts are all in order--I have found no difficulty anywhere. Do let me try, gentlemen.”

The gentlemen in question were at first taken aback, then amused, finally moved. After all, they said to each other, there was no reason why the girl should not try. As long as the duties were discharged exactly and punctually, there was no reason why they should not be undertaken by a woman as well as by a man.

“But there must be no favouritism, Miss Masters,” said one, with a twinkle in his eye; “no letting off of any particular friend. You must be firm, even with your nearest and dearest. If people don’t pay up after two or three applications, you must harden your heart and take out a summons.”

“I will,” said Bethia seriously.

In a few days the news of her installation as assistant overseer spread through the place, one of the first to hear of it being Jacob Fowler.

Bethia was standing in the kitchen shelling peas one morning when his knock came at the door, almost immediately followed by the appearance of his large person from behind it.

“Be this here true what I’ve a-heard?” he inquired abruptly. “Be it true as you be a-goin’ to carry on this rate-collecting same as your father did do?”

“Yes, Mr. Fowler,” answered Bethia, not without a certain pride. “The Parish Council gentlemen think I can do it just as well as anybody; and I’m glad to say they’ve agreed to let me try.”

“_I_ don’t agree, then,” cried Jacob violently. “It bain’t at all fit nor becomin’ for a young ’ooman same as you to be a-goin’ about from house to house, visitin’ folks and axin’ them for their money. It bain’t proper, I tell ’ee.”

“What nonsense!” exclaimed Bethia, with a toss of her pretty curly locks. “What’s it to you, Mr. Fowler, anyhow?”

“I don’t like it,” growled Fowler. “Will you go and ax folks for it, same as you did ax I?”

“I shall leave a little note first,” said Bethia, with a very business-like air, “a demand-note, you know. If they don’t pay up I shall call personally.”

“It bain’t the right thing for a faymale,” repeated Fowler sourly; “least of all for a young faymale. Folks ’ull be givin’ ye impidence.”

“Oh, no, they won’t,” returned Bethia with dignity. “I’m not one that anybody could take liberties with, Mr. Fowler.”

He stood leaning against the table frowning.

“Will ye ax ’em rough-like, or will ye ax ’em civil?” he inquired, after ruminating for a while.

“Why, of course I shall be civil, Mr. Fowler.”

“Will ye ax ’em so civil as ye did ax I?” he insisted with a kind of roar.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” stammered the girl, taken aback for a moment. “Yes,” recovering herself, “certainly I shall. There’s no reason why I should make any difference between you and anybody else.”

“You tell I that to my face! You’ll go a-speakin’ ’em soft and a-smilin’ at ’em pretty, jist same as ye did do to I! Dalled if I do allow it! Dalled if I do, I say!”

“Really, Mr. Fowler,” said Bethia with spirit, “I don’t know what you mean. It’s very rude of you to talk to me like that, and I do not see why you should interfere. I shall be business-like and polite, as I always try to be with every one, and I shall be firm too. The Law will support me just the same as if I were a man.”

“Dalled if I do allow it,” repeated Jacob, still in a kind of muffled bellow. “A British ratepayer I be, and have a-been this twenty year and more, and I say I bain’t a-goin’ to allow it. I know my rights so well as any man, and I bain’t a-goin’ to be put upon by a ’ooman. I bain’t a-goin’ to allow any young faymale to be took out of her proper place and set up where she’s no business to be. I’ll have no faymale tax-collectors a-gaddin’ about this here parish if I can prevent it. I’ll protest, maid, see if I don’t, and, what’s more, not one farden o’ rates will I pay into any faymale hands.”

Bethia, more and more irritated by his manner, thought it time to assert herself finally; and withdrawing her hands from the basin of peas, and looking him full in the face, she returned, with great firmness, “Won’t you, Mr. Fowler? Then I’ll make you.”

“Lard ha’ mercy me! Listen to the maid!” exclaimed Jacob, bursting into a fit of ironical laughter. “‘I’ll make ye,’ says she. Look at her,” pointing at the girl’s slender form. “That be a good un! I tell ’ee, Miss Masters, you’ll find it a bit hard to make I do anything I’ve not got a mind to do.”

Bethia took up a pod again and split it viciously. “I’ve got the Law at my back,” she remarked.

“Ho! ho! ho!” chuckled Jacob, this time with unfeigned merriment. “Listen to her! The Law at her back indeed! Such a little small back it be! Why, maidy, I could jist finish ye off wi’ one finger!”

“I’m not talking of brute force,” said Bethia, with flashing eyes. “The Law is stronger than you, Mr. Fowler. Now, if you’ll kindly go away and let me get on with my work, I’ll be much obliged.”

But Jacob did not take the hint. He sat down on the table instead, and watched the girl as, with an affectation of ignoring his presence, she moved about, filling her saucepan at the tap, peeling the potatoes, setting them on to boil. She did everything swiftly, deftly, and gracefully, holding her head very erect meanwhile, and being a little sharper in her movements than usual on account of her inward irritation. By-and-by Mrs. Masters came creaking down the narrow stairs, and started back at the sight of the farmer.

“Dear! To be sure! I didn’t know you had visitors here, Bethia, my dear. Won’t you sit i’ the armchair, Mr. Fowler? Do ’ee now. I’m sure ’tis very kind o’ ye to come a-visitin’ o’ we in our trouble.”

Bethia marched past her mother, removed the pot from the fire, and carried it over to the table.

“Could you make a little room, if you please?” she inquired tartly.

Jacob chuckled and rubbed his hands as he slowly removed his ponderous frame; then the remembrance of his former grievance returned to him, and he gazed at the widow loweringly.

“You don’t like this here notion, Mrs. Masters, I hope?” he inquired severely.

“What notion, sir?” returned the poor woman, startled.

“Why, this here notion o’ your daughter a-gaddin’ about lookin’ arter the rates.”

“Well, you see, we be so hard pressed, we be,” faltered she. “My daughter do try to do her best to earn a little, all ways she can. I’m sorry as you’ve a-got objections, Mr. Fowler.”

“It doesn’t in the least matter if he’s got objections or not,” put in Bethia tartly. “It’s no concern of Mr. Fowler’s. So long as he pays up regularly he need not trouble himself.”

Jacob got out of the armchair and once more approached the table.

“Look ’ee here,” he said threateningly; “this here’s past a joke. I do forbid ye for to do it--do ye hear?”

Bethia looked at him steadily. “I hear, and I can only repeat what I said before. Now, Mr. Fowler, will you please go away? I’m going to dish up.”