"If a wife was so fond of him as what I am, she'd treat him so faithful as what I do," argued Soosie-Toosie; but Thomas assured her that she was mistaken.
"Don't think it," he said. "No wife ever I heard tell about would drudge for nought same as you. However, I be going beyond my business, and no doubt you'll tell me so. But 'tis only on your account, I assure you."
"I know it, Tom, and I thank you for your good opinion. But father's built in a higher mould than you and me. He's born to command, and I'm born to obey. Us generally do what's easiest, to save trouble; and if he was to marry again, he'd still be born to command, and any woman, knowing him well enough to take him, would understand that."
"They might, or they might not," argued Mr. Palk. "When a man goes courting, he hides a lot in that matter and, strong though the governor may be, there's women very well able to hold their own against any man born; and Melindy Honeysett is one. But it may happen. The mills of God may be grinding for it; and then master would look at you, and the scales would fall from his eyes I expect."
As soon as he was alone, Lawrence Maynard read the letter from Dinah. It was the first time he had ever seen her writing, and he found it a large, free hand with a hopeful slope upwards at the end of each line.
But the note was very brief. She committed herself to no opinions and only begged Lawrence to come to her in Lizwell Woods, a mile or two from her home, on the following Sunday afternoon.
"I'll be where the Webburn rivers run together, so soon after three o'clock as I may," she said.
CHAPTER XXII
AT WATERSMEET
Dinah was first at the tryst and doubted not that Maynard would come. The lonely, naked woods swept round her and she sat on a fallen trunk not far from where the Webburn sisters shot the grey forest with light and foamed together beneath the feet of trees. The day was dull and windy with rain promised from the south. Withered beech leaves whirled about Dinah's feet in little eddies, then rushed and huddled away together in hurtling companies—with a sound like a kettle boiling over, thought Dinah. Her mind was not wholly upon Maynard, for Joe Stockman's gloomy prophecy had come true in one case and Mr. Bamsey was indisposed from a chill caught at the funeral. As yet they were not concerned for him; but he had grown somewhat worse since the preceding day and Faith had sent Jane to fetch the doctor. Jane never declined a commission that would take her into Ashburton.