“And shows what fathers are, seemingly.”
“Yes; though how my governor, whose grandfather himself went out working in other people’s gardens, could object to a girl who had pluck enough to earn her own living, I don’t know. I had a furious row about it, until he pointed out that, as she had chucked me, it was not much good quarrelling with him about her. Which was true. Nobody but you has really understood what a knock-down thing it was. I’m an atheist now—simply owing to that woman; I don’t believe in a single thing. I said all girls were the same till I met you. Still, I feel as bitter as a lemon when I think much about it. But you’re different, I can see that.”
“You’ll feel happier come presently.”
“I am happier already—in a way, because I find all women are not like that. You and Mrs. Daccombe have done me a lot of good, especially you.”
“Sure I be gay and proud to think so,” said Jane.
“To promise and then change! Why, it’s contrary to human nature, I should think,” declared the ingenuous Anthony. But Jane Stanberry did not reply; she had reached a point in her own experience of life that indicated the possibility of such a circumstance.
Young Maybridge was pleasant to see, and, as cynical chance would have it, his gifts, both physical and mental, were of a sort to shine conspicuous from the only contrast at hand. Dick Daccombe had a face of true Celtic cast, that might have been handsome, but was spoiled by an expression generally surly and always mean. His character became more distrustful and aggressive as he grew older, and the suspicious nature of him looked specially ill before Anthony’s frankness and simplicity. The latter was fair, with open, Saxon type of countenance. His good temper overcame all Richard’s jealousy from the first, but the keeper envied Anthony’s extra inch and a half of height and greater weight of shoulder, though he himself was the closer knit of the two.
For a period of weeks all went well between the young men, and their increasing intimacy argued ill for Anthony’s progress toward practical knowledge in agriculture. This Jonathan Daccombe understood, but held it no concern of his. It happened that the farmer came home one day just in time to see his son and his pupil departing from Cross Ways together. An expression of contempt touched with slight amusement lighted his grey face, and he turned to Jane Stanberry, who stood at the door.
“Like the seed ’pon stony ground,” he said. “Comed up wi’ a fine blade an’ full o’ nature, then withered away, ’cause there wasn’t no good holding stuff behind. A farmer! However, there’s no call he should be. He’m here to learn to forget, not to farm.”
“He is forgetting so fast as he can,” declared the girl. “He’s got nought to say nowadays ’bout the wickedness of women and such-like; an’ he went to church wi’ mother an’ me ’essterday to Postbridge, an’ singed the psalms an’ hymns wi’ a fine appetite, I’m sure. His voice be so deep as a cow when he uplifts it.”