"Good-bye. Think no more of this--and no more will I."
She left him, and he sat down where a sluice opened off the leat, so that the overflow in time of torrent might do no hurt to the banks. He sat and regretted what he believed to be his precipitation. The time was not ripe. He had sprung this proposal too suddenly upon her. For her own sake he had not played the lover as a preliminary, and as a result she failed to recognise the lover in him. He had erred in tactics. He was not much downcast, but felt that the opening battle was well ended, with a defeat that he foresaw. He had explained the kiss, and this interview was thereby justified. It would not be necessary to retrace that old ground again. And yet he doubted whether Rhoda had quite understood him.
"If she did understand, she didn't believe," he told himself.
He was not ill-pleased with the encounter. He had fired the first shot and engaged her in the first skirmish. He must tell Margaret all that had happened, and he must hear from Margaret if any results of this adventure were displayed by Rhoda. He felt pretty certain that none would be. David she might confide in, but not in Margaret. The interview as a whole did not dismay him, and it was not until he reached home and heard an unfavourable report of his mother's health that he became gloomy.
Meanwhile the girl, a little fluttered by this occurrence, proceeded on her way with thoughts not wholly pleasant; and to her came the leat man, Simon Snell, upon his rounds. His eyes grew large and watered a little when he caught sight of her in the distance. At first, indeed, he was minded to dive off the footpath, hasten away and make as though he had not seen her; but he fortified himself against this pusillanimous instinct, held on boldly, and presently saluted her in his thin, somewhat senseless voice.
"Good-day to 'e, Miss Rhoda Bowden. Glad to meet you on the leat path, I'm sure. Don't often see you this way."
"Good-morning, Mr. Snell."
"And a very good morning to you. Beautiful spring weather, to be sure. Beautiful dogs, to be sure. Never see you or David without a fine dog. And the dog as I had off your farther would have made a very fine, upstanding dog without a doubt, if her hadn't have gone and died. Not your fault--I'm not saying that."
"I was very sorry to hear it."
"Of course you was; and if I'd had enough sense, and put the poor young dog in a basket and carry 'un up over to you, I'll lay with your dog cleverness as you'd have saved 'un. But, instead, I traapsed off to Walkhampton with him--to Adam Thorpe--and he got the dog underground in a week."