“I’m sure I don’t want for to gainsay ye, Martha,” he replied humbly. “But I don’t see why ye can’t go up to the mill and see Mrs. Moss without me coming too. Ole friends is ole friends, o’ course, and ’tis nat’ral comin’ back to th’ ole place—we should want to see ’em. But there’s reasons for things, and reasons agin ’em, so to speak. You and Milly Harkitt was none such friends when ye lived ’ere afore ye was wed—if the sayin’s true.”
“Sayin’s ain’t never true,” she said bluntly. “Else there’s a sayin’ as you and she was friends if we wasn’t! Reasons for and reasons agin, indeed! Milly’s wed since I see ’er, and I want to ’ave a look and see if it’s altered ’er.”
The man blushed and smiled, but he neither retorted nor denied the charge.
“She were a pritty gentle crittur,” was all he said, thoughtfully looking beyond his wife. “I ’ope she bain’t altered.”
“Well, if ye want so much to know, ye’d best come and see,” she said tartly.
“Is that all ye be goin’ up there for?” said he irrelevantly, and one might have said, suspiciously.
“Never you mind what I’m goin’ for,” retorted she, stepping out up the hill. “I be goin’ to please myself, and that’s enough. I’ll be ’ome to supper, and mind you don’t go fallin’ in with no pals as you did last night, and come ’ome late. I don’t know but what you ’adn’t best step up and fetch me.”
“All right,” said the man as he turned away down the lane. “What time?”
“Eight o’clock,” she called back promptly. “And you know I don’t relish waiting.”
“I won’t keep ye waitin’,” said he quietly. “I’ll stop outside for ye at eight o’clock.”
“What, afraid to have a look at the girl!” laughed she again. And she went on smartly up the hill. But when she got to the top she did not at once turn into the garden that surrounded the house, but stood awhile in the field, leaning her arms on the gate and staring out to the sunset.
She was not of the dreamy sort, but to-night she was thinking: thinking a little bit of the man who had just left her—trying to remember just how much she had heard about him and Milly, but thinking more still of another young man who had many times stood at her side in yonder lane or at this very gate whence she now watched the afterglow gild the purple cloud-banks out west.