“Wouldn’t I have sent ’e away wi’ a flea to your ear when fust you axed, if I’d meant all I said, you silly gawkim?”
Then he put his arm round her and hugged her very close. No artifice restrained the plump natural curves of her waist; her garments were thin and the soft body of her beneath them fired him.
“Give awver! You’m squeezin’ me, Jan!”
“Say it then—say it out—or I’ll hug ’e, an’ hug ’e, an’ hug ’e to death for sheer love!”
“You gert thick-headed twoad! Caan’t ’e read awnly a woman’s words to ’e? Haven’t ’e found out these long months? Didn’t ’e even guess how ’twas when we went christening Farmer Chave’s apple trees down-along by night, an’ I slapped your face for comin’ to me arter you’d been fooling with that slammocking maypole of a gal, Tom Chubb’s darter? You’m blind for all your eyes.”
He gave an inarticulate grunt and poured huge noisy kisses on her hair and face and little ears.
“Christ A’mighty! Sweatin’ for joy I be! To think it—to think you finds the likes o’ me gude enough for ’e! Theer—theer. Hallelujah!”
He shouted and danced with the grace of a brown bear, while she smoothed herself from his salutations and sat up panting after such rough embrace. Then he took out his knife and sought the beech tree behind them. Sunset fires were dying away. Only a starry twinkling of auburn light still caught the high tops of the tallest trees and marked them out against the prevailing shadows of the woods.
“’Tis a deed should be cut on the first bark as meets your eyes after the woman’s said ‘yes’ to ’e,” declared John.
Then, turning to the trunk where lichens painted pale silver patterns on the grey, he set to work, at the height of a man’s heart, and roughly fashioned the letters “S. B.” and “ J. A.” with a scroll around them and a knot beneath to indicate the nature of true love.