LITMIR.BIZ

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struggled to have one, and would, and did. Fate’s nothen beside a woman’s schemen!’

      ‘I suppose, then, that Fate is a He, like us, and the Lord, and the rest o’ ’em up above there,’ said Gad, lifting his eyes to the sky.

      ‘Hullo! Here’s the young woman comen that we were a-talken about by-now,’ said a grinder, suddenly interrupting. ‘She’s comen up here, as I be alive!’

      The two grinders stood and regarded Cytherea as if she had been a ship tacking into a harbour, nearly stopping the mill in their new interest.

      ‘Stylish accoutrements about the head and shoulders, to my thinken,’ said the clerk. ‘Sheenen curls, and plenty o’ em.’

      ‘If there’s one kind of pride more excusable than another in a young woman, ’tis being proud of her hair,’ said Mr. Springrove.

      ‘Dear man! — the pride there is only a small piece o’ the whole. I warrant now, though she can show such a figure, she ha’n’t a stick o’ furniture to call her own.’

      ‘Come, Clerk Crickett, let the maid be a maid while she is a maid,’ said Farmer Springrove chivalrously.

      ‘O,’ replied the servant of the Church; ‘I’ve nothen to say against it — O no:

      ‘“The chimney-sweeper’s daughter Sue

       As I have heard declare, O,

       Although she’s neither sock nor shoe

       Will curl and deck her hair, O.”’

      Cytherea was rather disconcerted at finding that the gradual cessation of the chopping of the mill was on her account, and still more when she saw all the cider-makers’ eyes fixed upon her except Mr. Springrove’s, whose natural delicacy restrained him. She neared the plot of grass, but instead of advancing further, hesitated on its border.

      Mr. Springrove perceived her embarrassment, which was relieved when she saw his old-established figure coming across to her, wiping his hands in his apron.

      ‘I know your errand, missie,’ he said, ‘and am glad to see you, and attend to it. I’ll step indoors.’

      ‘If you are busy I am in no hurry for a minute or two,’ said Cytherea.

      ‘Then if so be you really wouldn’t mind, we’ll wring down this last filling to let it drain all night?’

      ‘Not at all. I like to see you.’

      ‘We are only just grinding down the early pickthongs and griffins,’ continued the farmer, in a half-apologetic tone for detaining by his cider-making any well-dressed woman. ‘They rot as black as a chimney-crook if we keep ’em till the regulars turn in.’ As he spoke he went back to the press, Cytherea keeping at his elbow. ‘I’m later than I should have been by rights,’ he continued, taking up a lever for propelling the screw, and beckoning to the men to come forward. ‘The truth is, my son Edward had promised to come today, and I made preparations; but instead of him comes a letter: “London, September the eighteenth, Dear Father,” says he, and went on to tell me he couldn’t. It threw me out a bit.’

      ‘Of course,’ said Cytherea.

      ‘He’s got a place ‘a b’lieve?’ said the clerk, drawing near.

      ‘No, poor mortal fellow, no. He tried for this one here, you know, but couldn’t manage to get it. I don’t know the rights o’ the matter, but willy-nilly they wouldn’t have him for steward. Now mates, form in line.’

      Springrove, the clerk, the grinders, and Gad, all ranged themselves behind the lever of the screw, and walked round like soldiers wheeling.

      ‘The man that the old quean hev got is a man you can hardly get upon your tongue to gainsay, by the look o’ en,’ rejoined Clerk Crickett.

      ‘One o’ them people that can contrive to be thought no worse o’ for stealen a horse than another man for looken over hedge at en,’ said a grinder.

      ‘Well, he’s all there as steward, and is quite the gentleman — no doubt about that.’

      ‘So would my Ted ha’ been, for the matter o’ that,’ the farmer said.

      ‘That’s true: ‘a would, sir.’

      ‘I said, I’ll give Ted a good education if it do cost me my eyes, and I would have done it.’

      ‘Ay, that you would so,’ said the chorus of assistants solemnly.

      ‘But he took to books and drawing naturally, and cost very little; and as a wind-up the womenfolk hatched up a match between him and his cousin.’

      ‘When’s the wedden to be, Mr. Springrove?’

      ‘Uncertain — but soon, I suppose. Edward, you see, can do anything pretty nearly, and yet can’t get a straightforward living. I wish sometimes I had kept him here, and let professions go. But he was such a one for the pencil.’

      He dropped the lever in the hedge, and turned to his visitor.

      ‘Now then, missie, if you’ll come indoors, please.’

      Gad Weedy looked with a placid criticism at Cytherea as she withdrew with the farmer.

      ‘I could tell by the tongue o’ her that she didn’t take her degrees in our county,’ he said in an undertone.

      ‘The railways have left you lonely here,’ she observed, when they were indoors.

      Save the withered old flies, which were quite tame from the solitude, not a being was in the house. Nobody seemed to have entered it since the last passenger had been called out to mount the last stage-coach that had run by.

      ‘Yes, the Inn and I seem almost a pair of fossils,’ the farmer replied, looking at the room and then at himself.

      ‘O, Mr. Springrove,’ said Cytherea, suddenly recollecting herself; ‘I am much obliged to you for recommending me to Miss Aldclyffe.’ She began to warm towards the old man; there was in him a gentleness of disposition which reminded her of her own father.

      ‘Recommending? Not at all, miss. Ted — that’s my son — Ted said a fellow-draughtsman of his had a sister who wanted to be doing something in the world, and I mentioned it to the housekeeper, that’s all. Ay, I miss my son very much.’

      She kept her back to the window that he might not see her rising colour.

      ‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘sometimes I can’t help feeling uneasy about him. You know, he seems not made for a town life exactly: he gets very queer over it sometimes, I think. Perhaps he’ll be better when he’s married to Adelaide.’

      A half-impatient feeling arose in her, like that which possesses a sick person when he hears a recently-struck hour struck again by a slow clock. She had lived further on.

      ‘Everything depends upon whether he loves her,’ she said tremulously.

      ‘He used to — he doesn’t show it so much now; but that’s because he’s older. You see, it was several years ago they first walked together as young man and young woman. She’s altered too from what she was when he first courted her.’

      ‘How, sir?’

      ‘O, she’s more sensible by half. When he used to write to her she’d creep up the lane and look back over her shoulder, and slide out the letter, and read a word and stand in thought looking at the hills and seeing none. Then the cuckoo would cry — away the letter would slip, and she’d start wi’ fright at the mere bird, and have a red skin before the quickest man among ye could say, “Blood rush up.”’

      He came forward with the money and dropped it into her hand. His thoughts were still with Edward, and he absently took her little fingers in his as he said, earnestly and ingenuously —

      ”Tis

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