He snapped the stem and passed on, whistling the air of his ditty, and twirling the rose between finger and thumb.
"Men are all ninnies," Ruby decided as she dropped the blind; "and I thank the fates that framed me female and priced me high. Heigho! but it's a difficult world for women. Either a man thinks you an angel, and then you know him for a fool, or he sees through you and won't marry you for worlds. If we behaved like that, men would fare badly, I reckon. Zeb loved me till the very moment I began to respect him: then he left off. If this one . . . I like his cool way of plucking my roses, though. Zeb would have waited and wanted, till the flower dropped."
She spent longer than usual over her dressing: so that when she appeared in the parlour the two men were already seated at breakfast. The room still bore traces of last night's frolic. The uncarpeted boards gleamed as the guests' feet had polished them; and upon the very spot where the stranger had danced now stood the breakfast-table, piled with broken meats. This alone of all the heavier pieces of furniture had been restored to its place. As Ruby entered, the stranger broke off an earnest conversation he was holding with the farmer, and stood up to greet her. The rose lay on her plate.
"Who has robbed my rose-bush?" she asked.
"I am guilty," he answered: "I stole it to give it back; and, not being mine, 'twas the harder to part with."
"To my mind," broke in Farmer Tresidder, with his mouth full of ham, "the best part o' the feast be the over-plush. Squab pie, muggetty pie, conger pie, sweet giblet pie—such a whack of pies do try a man, to be sure. Likewise junkets an' heavy cake be a responsibility, for if not eaten quick, they perish. But let it be mine to pass my days with a cheek o' pork like the present instance. Ruby, my dear, the young man here wants to lave us."
"Leave us?" echoed Ruby, pricking her finger deep in the act of pinning the stranger's rose in her bosom.
"You hear, young man. That's the tone o' speech signifyin' 'damn it all!' among women. And so say I, wi' all these vittles cryin' out to be ate."
"These brisk days," began the stranger quietly, "are not to be let slip. I have no wife, no kin, no friends, no fortune—or only the pound or two sewn in my belt. The rest has been lost to me these three days and lies with the Sentinel, five fathoms deep in your cove below. It is time for me to begin the world anew."
"But how about that notion o' mine?"