“’Tis long in the straw this year,” she said. “You must thresh it for me when you can and hand me the straw for plaiting. I can sell all the hats an’ bonnets tu, as I’m like to weave. An’ parson do allus give me half a crown each year for a new straw hat.”
John came down from his perch and picked up the little sheaf. Then, the day’s work done, they dawdled up the hill, and Sarah, hot and weary, after toil in great sunshine, sometimes took John’s hand, like a little child, when the road revealed no other person.
Up through the lanes from the farm of Cator Court to the higher land they made their way, crossed over the river nigh Dury and passed beside a wall where scabious drew a sky-blue mantle over the silver and ebony lichens of the granite. Pennyworts also raised their little steeples from the interstices of the old wall; briars broke its lines; red berries and black twinkled among the grasses, and dainty cups and purses of ripe seeds revealed their treasures; flowers not a few also blossomed there, while butterflies gemmed the golden ragwort, and bees struggled at many blossoms. A mellow murmur of life gladdened the evening, and the sun, slow sinking behind distant Bellever, warmed the world with rich horizontal light. At a break in the stones dripped a stream in a little dark nest of ferns. Here, too, stood a stile leading into heavy woods, and one sentinel beech tree arose at the corner of a gamekeeper’s path through the preserves. Hither, weary with her labours and desiring a brief rest, Sarah turned, climbed the stile, and sat down beneath the tree. John accompanied her and they reclined in silence awhile where the ripe glory of September sunshine sent a shimmer of ruddy and diaphanous light into the heart of the wood and flamed upon the bole of the great beech. A woodpecker suddenly departed from the foliage above the silent pair. He made off with a dipping, undulatory motion and cheerful laughter, as who should say, “two is company and three none.”
John turned to Sarah and sighed and shook his head while he tickled her hand with a straw from the sheaf. She did not withdraw it, so he came a little nearer and put the straw up her arm; then followed it with two of his own fingers and felt her moist skin under them.
She laughed lazily, and the music fired his heart and sluggish tongue.
“Oh, God, Sally, how long be I to dance upon your beck and call for nought? How long be I to bide this way while you hang back?”
“Us couldn’t be gerter friends.”
“Ess fay, but us could. Wheer do friendship lead to ’twixt men an’ women? Dost hear? I knaw you’m butivul to see, an’ purtiest gal in Postbridge an’ such like; an’ I knaw a man o’ my fortune an’ poor brain power’s got no right—an’ yet, though ’tis bowldacious so to do, I ban’t built to keep away from ’e. I peek an’ pine an’ dwindle for ’e, I do.”
“‘Dwindle,’ dear heart! Wheer’s the signs of that? You’m stronger an’ taller an’ better’n any man on East Dart.”
“Did ’e say ‘better,’ Sally? Did ’e mean it? ’Tis a year since I fust axed ’e, serious as a man, an’ a dozen times ’twixt then an’ now I’ve axed again. I swear I thought as I’d seen love light in them misty eyes of thine, else I’d have troubled ’e less often. But—but—”