A farm in spring is all birth-young things coming out of bud and shell, and human beings watching over the process with faint excitement feeding and tending what has been born. So still the young man sat, that a mother-goose, with stately cross-footed waddle, brought her six yellow-necked grey-backed goslings to strop their little beaks against the grass blades at his feet. Now and again Mrs. Narracombe or the girl Megan would come and ask if he wanted anything, and he would smile and say: “Nothing, thanks. It's splendid here.” Towards tea-time they came out together, bearing a long poultice of some dark stuff in a bowl, and after a long and solemn scrutiny of his swollen knee, bound it on. When they were gone, he thought of the girl's soft “Oh!”--of her pitying eyes, and the little wrinkle in her brow. And again he felt that unreasoning irritation against his departed friend, who had talked such rot about her. When she brought out his tea, he said:
She forced down her upper lip, as if afraid that to smile was not polite. “He was a funny gentleman; he made us laugh. I think he is very clever.”
“He said I was a daughter of the bards. What are they?”
“Welsh poets, who lived hundreds of years ago.”
“He meant that you were the sort of girl they sang about.”
She wrinkled her brows. “I think he likes to joke. Am I?”
And Ashurst thought: 'You are a pretty thing!'
“He said, too, that Joe was a Saxon type. What would that be?”
“Which is Joe? With the blue eyes and red face?”
“Well, he meant that Joe was like the men who came over to England about fourteen hundred years ago, and conquered it.”
“Garton's crazy about that sort of thing; but I must say Joe does look a bit Early Saxon.”
That “Yes” tickled Ashurst. It was so crisp and graceful, so conclusive, and politely acquiescent in what was evidently. Greek to her.
“He said that all the other boys were regular gipsies. He should not have said that. My aunt laughed, but she didn't like it, of course, and my cousins were angry. Uncle was a farmer--farmers are not gipsies. It is wrong to hurt people.”
Ashurst wanted to take her hand and give it a squeeze, but he only answered:
“Quite right, Megan. By the way, I heard you putting the little ones to bed last night.”