The colour rose higher yet in Mattie’s face, but the thing that lay close in her heart was too warm for a show of temper.
“Whatever makes you say that?” she queried innocently.
For the first time Dick showed signs of discomfort, turning about a little, and looking away from her. “Nay, it’s just that you’re not so young, these days,” he returned at last, bravely. “Same age as myself, I’ve heard my old mother say, and you’d not catch me crossing t’ ocean if you give me Canada!”
“Folks are as young as they feel,” Mattie said, trying to repress the pang which had seized her when he mentioned the ocean. “The sea’s nothing to me! As for age and such-like, there’s folks go abroad when they’re a deal older than us. What, I remember Mrs. Dugdale going off to New Zealand when she was nigh on ninety!”
“Ay, but they go sudden-like,” Dick said, wrinkling his brow as if to help the working of his brain. “They don’t sit planning a sight o’ years. Things is sudden-like when they’re meant.”
“Things always seem sudden when they come,” Mattie retorted briskly. “Planning makes no difference. Look how folks know they’re going to die from the very minute they’re born, and yet they’re mighty surprised about it when it happens!”
“Folks don’t plan to die.... Leastways, them as does seldom brings it off. And that brings me back like to what I was trying to say. If you stop over long on the edge of a jump you take root afore you think.”
“I shan’t have much root to bother about if I go to Canada!” Mattie laughed. “Saving your presence, Mr. Nelson, there’s precious little I’d mind leaving behind.”
The old postman shook his head.
“You strike roots afore you know. Everything as you do each day is a root o’ some sort. Even folks as has been in prison knows what it is to strike roots.”