“They’ll be black if I hear much more about him,” he answered shortly. “For I’ll darken both first day he comes here—just to show how we stand.”
“You’re jealous afore you’ve seed him!”
“An’ you’re a blamed sight too hungry to see him. Best drop him. He won’t be nought to you, I s’pose?”
“How can you be so sharp, Dick? Ban’t it natural a gal what leads such a wisht life as me should think twice of a new face—an’ a gen’leman, too?”
“Anthony Maybridge have got one enemy afore he shows his nose here; and you’re to thank for it.”
Jane laughed. “Then I know what to expect when we’m married, I s’pose. But no call for you to be afeared! If he was so butivul as Angel Gabriel he’d be nought to me. Kiss me same as I kissed you just now.”
But Dick was troubled. His clay pipe also drew ill, and he dashed it into the water. “Damn kissing!” he said; “I’m sick of it. Get home, an’ let me go to work.”
“The young man will like you better than me, when all’s said, dear heart; for you’ll give him best sport of anybody in these parts.”
He grunted, and left her without more words; while she, familiar with his sulky moods, showed no particular regret. To the hills he strode away, and the misty marshes swallowed up sight of him, while he threaded his road through the bogs, climbed great stony slopes under the hilltop, and reached his warren. But bad fortune stuck close to Richard that night, for of two fine rabbits snared since sundown, nothing remained but the heads.
Foxes, however, are sacred upon Dartmoor, even in the warrens; though, if evil language could have hurt them, it must have gone ill with a vixen and five brave cubs, whose home was hard by in the granite bosom of White Tor.