"Theer's some doan't want no help," retorted the other. "What be you doin' indoors? Your plaace is 'pon the land with the men."
"Wheer you'd like to be, if they'd let 'e," stung the other; "but you'm no gude to 'em—a poor pin-tailed wench like you."
"Ess fay! Us must have a brazen faace an' awver-blawn shape like yourn to make the men come about us! Ban't sense—awnly fat they look for in a female of coourse!" snapped back Margery; and in the meantime the cause of this explosion—proud of his power, but uneasy before the wrath of women—prepared to depart. Fortune favoured his exit, for Honor appeared suddenly at the other end of the farmyard with some kittens in her hands and a mother cat, tail in air, marching beside her and lifting misty green eyes, full of joy.
Libby turned therefore, delivered his letter, and was gone; while behind him voices clashed in anger, one sweet, one shrill. Then a door slammed as Margery hastened away upon a Parthian shot, and her sister stamped furiously, having no word to answer but a man's. Sally immediately left the house and proceeded after the messenger; but a possibility of this he had foreseen, and was now well upon his way back to Godleigh. Sally therefore found herself disappointed anew, and marked her emotions by ill-treating a pig that had the misfortune to cross her stormy path.
Another woman's soul was also in arms; and while Margery wept invisible and her sister used the ugliest words that she knew, under her breath, their mistress walked up and down the grass plot where it extended between the farm and the fields, separated from the latter by a dip in the land and a strange fence of granite posts and old steel rope.
Honor had now come from seeing Myles Stapledon. Together, after breakfast, they had inspected a new cow-byre on outlying land, and, upon the way back, he told her that he designed to return to Tavistock at the end of that week. Only by a sudden alteration of pace and change of foot did she show her first surprise. Then she lifted a questioning gaze to his impassive face.
"Why?" she asked.
"Well, why not? I've been here three months and there is nothing more for me to do—at any rate nothing that need keep me on the spot."
"There's still less for you to do at Tavistock. You told me a month ago that there was nothing to take you back. You've sold the old house and let the mill."
"It is so; but I must—I have plans—I may invest some money at Plymouth. And I must work, you know."