Hamer shook his head.
“Not unless I’d be of use! It hurts me to see good stuff going by the board. I’d be dreaming all night it was Watters, and waking Mother twisting ropes out of the sheets! I’ll have a Minimax in every corner after this, won’t I, Dandy Anne?”
He linked his arm in hers, and they followed the trap as it spun out into the main road, and turned quickly into the Lane. Now and again, over and through the hedges, they caught the gleam of the lamps; and once Lanty’s head and shoulders stood out black on the golden air. In the drawing-room at Watters, Wiggie used the perfect artistry of his demi-voix to set Mrs. Hamer nodding over 1 d.c. between sixth and seventh d.trs.
Hamer sighed in the Lane, and Dandy knew he was away on his tram-horse hobby once more.
“I could have lent a hand with a bucket!” he said regretfully, “though they’ve likely more than enough men on the job already. I could have sent the hat round, too, though perhaps they’d not say thank you for that sort of thing, up here, and of course they’re insured. But I’m a big weight. I’d have made a difference to the going, and Lancaster was in a hurry. But I’d have liked to lend a hand!”
Dandy was not listening. Their wandering had brought them to the Gate of the Fairy-Ring, and she drew him up to the fence. There she told him something of the walk home and the talk that had roused her to revolt.
“I’m a Halstedite still!” she said ruefully. “I’ve no right to Watters until lean make little pictures out of the smell of burnt wood and the flicker of a farthing dip—until sight and sound and scent are all mixed more or less into one. At present, when I wake to a slow Scotch drizzle, I don’t smell violets, or see mushrooms rushing up, or hear cabbages taking long drinks, but I’ve got to learn. Do you think I might ask the fairies to put me up to a thing or two—what ‘fog’ means, for instance, and ‘hoggin’ taties,’ and ‘a good tommy-spot’; and how you ‘kill’ hay, and why the weather is always wrong for turnips? Let me through, Daddy dear, and I’ll see if they’ve anything to say to me!”
Hamer slipped a bar and let her slide past, and with a laugh she stepped on limber feet into the circle, a fairy-thing herself in her white gown, with the yellow light on her uncovered hair. But even as she caught her dress in her fingers and pointed a foot, she checked, her lips parted, her ear bent to listen. Lancaster’s trap, long lost in the myriad turns of the Lane, had emerged into the open road, and the horse’s hoofs, quickened to a sharp trot, rang from hill to hill. There are things to be read from a hoof-beat in the country quiet. Up in the Dales, when a man gallops, the farmers come to their doors, knowing he rides for succour. Lanty’s trot spelt urgency, and more than one voice hailed him as he passed. They heard him answer without stopping; saw the far-off lamps flung on the dark borders; heard the hoofs dwindle and quicken and finally die.
Hamer’s wise eyes were on Dandy as she stood, her head stooped for the last message. She had forgotten him as well as the fairies, and her face, in its unconscious revelation, was neither that of a spirit nor of the little girl he loved, but the face of a woman come into her kingdom. With a passionate sense of loss, he strode over and lifted her out of the Ring.