She went home now, and after dinner on that day, found opportunity to speak with her foster-father. They were cutting oats and she descended to the valley field beside Ben and made a clean breast of her secrets, only to find they were not hidden from him. He treated her as one much younger than she really was, and seeing that she was indeed younger than her age in many particulars of mind, this process always satisfied Dinah and made her feel happier with Ben Bamsey than his family, who made no such concession, but, on the contrary, attributed qualities to Dinah she lacked.
"Foster-father," she said, "I'm wishful to have a tell and here's a good chance. I be getting in a proper mizmaze I do assure 'e."
"You must be patient, my little dear," he answered.
"I've been patient for six months, though it's more like six years since I changed about poor Johnny. And other people, so well as I, do feel I'd be better away."
"Have I ever said you wouldn't be better away, Dinah? I know only too well how it is. But a father can look deeper into life than his child. I'm wide awake—watching. I understand your troubles and try to lessen 'em where I can."
"If you wasn't here, I'd have runned away long ago. For a little bit, after that cruel come-along-of-it, I wouldn't have minded to die. Now that's passed; but you, who never did such a thing, can't tell what it is to know that you're fretting and galling two other women. And Mrs. Bamsey and Jane have a right to be fretted and galled by me. I can well understand, without their looks, how I must be to them; and 'tis a sharp thorn in your flesh to be hated, and it's making me miserable."
He had not guessed she much felt this side of the position.
"You'm growing up, I see, like everybody else," he said. "I forget that I can't have it both ways, and can't have you a loving, watchful daughter and a child too. And if you can think for me, as you do so wonderful, then you'm old enough to feel for yourself, of course. Still you'm so parlous young in some ways, that it ain't strange I still think of you a child in everyway. I suppose you must go and I mustn't find nothing against no more. And yet——"
He broke off, his mind upon Maynard.
While he was hesitating and wondering whether he should name the man, Dinah saved him the trouble.