Soon Will Blanchard reached his sweetheart, and showed himself a brown, straight youngster, with curly hair, pugnacious nose, good shoulders, and a figure so well put together that his height was not apparent until he stood alongside another man. Will’s eyes were grey as Phoebe’s, but of a different expression; soft and unsettled, cloudy as the recent weather, full of the alternate mist and flash of a precious stone, one moment all a-dreaming, the next aglow. His natural look was at first sight a little stern until a man came to know it, then this impression waned and left a critic puzzled. The square cut of his face and abrupt angle of his jaw did not indeed belie Will Blanchard, but the man’s smile magically dissipated this austerity of aspect, and no sudden sunshine ever brightened a dark day quicker than pleasure made bright his features. It was a sulky, sleepy, sweet, changeable face—very fascinating in the eyes of women. His musical laugh once fluttered sundry young bosoms, brightened many pretty eyes and cheeks, but Will’s heart was Phoebe Lyddon’s now—had been for six full months—and albeit a mere country boy in knowledge of the world, younger far than his one-and-twenty years of life, and wholly unskilled in those arts whose practice enables men to dwell together with friendship and harmony, yet Will Blanchard was quite old enough and wise enough and rich enough to wed, and make a husband of more than common quality at that—in his own opinion.
Fortified by this conviction, and determined to wait no longer, he now came to see Phoebe. Within the sheltering arms of the Pixies’ Parlour he kissed her, pressed her against his wet velveteen jacket, then sat down under the rocks beside her.
“You ’m comed wi’ the sun, dear Will.”
“Ay—the weather breaks. I hope theer’ll be a drop more water down the river bimebye. You got my letter all right?”
“Ess fay, else I shouldn’t be here. And this tremendous matter in hand?”
“I thought you’d guess what ’t was. I be weary o’ waitin’ for ’e. An’ as I comed of age last month, I’m a man in law so well as larnin’, and I’m gwaine to speak to Miller Lyddon this very night.”
Phoebe looked blank. There was a moment’s silence while Will picked and ate the wood-strawberries in his sweetheart’s dress.
“Caan’t ’e think o’ nothin’ wiser than to see faither?” she said at last.
“Theer ban’t nothin’ wiser. He knaws we ’m tokened, and it’s no manner o’ use him gwaine on pretendin’ to himself ’t isn’t so. You ’m wife-old, and you’ve made choice o’ me; and I’m a ripe man, as have thought a lot in my time, and be earnin’ gude money and all. Besides, ’t is a dead-sure fact I’ll have auld Morgan’s place as head waterkeeper, an’ the cottage along with it, in fair time.”
“Ban’t for me to lift up no hindrances, but you knaw faither.”