“That don’t matter,” she said, almost crying. “Richard did not ought to have spoken to you of that thing. Mother told everyone that what they done was no better than if they were heathens, and that no one was to say a word about it. No one would have ever but our Richard.”
Anne took Rachel on to her knees, and hugged the child close; at that moment she was near to tears herself; for the first time in her life she understood that she had neighbours who loved her, and did not think of her only as a queer girl, and the daughter of a queer clergyman.
“Sit here, close to me,” she said, letting the child go. “And let me talk to your brother, because he is very clever and is....” It was on the tip of her tongue to say “a gentleman,” but she altered it to: “because I am sure he would never be unkind.”
Rachel looked at him in a way which threatened that if he were unkind to Miss Dunnock there would be terrible consequences, and Richard Sotheby poured out the tea in silence, until Anne asked him again why he was interested in the ploughing up of the doorstep.
“Because it was, as my mother said, a heathenish act, and I imagine that, like most heathen things, it must have been beautiful.”
“Yes, it was beautiful,” replied Anne instantly. “It was so beautiful that I was fascinated watching it, and though I was crying with shame, I was glad that they had done it.”
Richard Sotheby grinned with interest as Anne said this, and nodded his head several times.
“Like a rape,” he said under his breath. His words were not meant for Anne to hear, but she had caught the word, and for some minutes did not know what to say or where to look, but sat praying with all her soul that she would not blush. At last the danger passed, and she went on to speak of the plough wobbling a little as it ran through the earth, and of the broad, shiny backs of the three chestnut horses, and the handsome face opposite her quickened with pleasure as she told how it happened after a fall of snow, and that there was snow on the horses’ manes and on the carters’ caps.
When she had described the whole scene, he pressed her for further details, and soon she found that she was speaking of her feelings after the event, and that he was listening in silence. She pulled herself up suddenly, unwilling to tell him so much about herself, and there was a long silence, for the young man did not press her with questions, but the silence was broken at last by Anne saying: “But you cannot understand it unless I were to tell you about my father.”
“Of course it came about through him in the first place,” said Richard Sotheby reflectively, and Anne would have begun to speak of her father and her feelings for him if she had not felt Rachel shiver, and then she perceived that the sun was sinking low, and that it had grown cold for sitting out of doors.