"That's just the beginning about peat," he said. "But don't think you know nothing yet. My darter knows more than that—ignorant though she is."
"Not ignorant, I'm sure. But—well, shall I tell her that, just for the present, we've done wi' peat, or would you rather——?"
Gregory felt that Brendon had fairly earned a respite and reward. Moreover, the sunshine was making him sleepy.
"Go an' look after her," he said. "An' come back to me presently. I'll have forty winks. Nought on earth makes me so dog-tired as laziness."
Daniel was gone in a moment, yet, as he strode whence the girl had disappeared, he found time to ask himself what this must mean. He had never looked round after a woman in his life. Women about a place made him uneasy, and acted as a restraint on comfort. He knew nothing whatever concerning them, and was quite content to believe the opinions of John Prout: that, upon the whole, a man might be better single. Yet this woman had interested him from the first moment that he saw her; he had thought of her not seldom since; he had anticipated another meeting with interest that was pleasure.
He crossed Wattern Oke, then looked down where Tavy winds beneath the stony side of Fur Tor. A bright blue spot appeared motionless at the brink of the river. Daniel, feeling surprise to think that she had wandered so far, hastened forward and, in a quarter of an hour, stood beside her. She smiled at him.
"I knowed you'd come for me," she said. "There was that in your face made me feel it. You was sorry when I went off?"
"So I was then."
"I rather wanted to see if you would be. It shows friendship. I like men to be friends with me. I often wish I'd been born a man myself—'stead of a woman. I'm such a big maiden, an' awful strong—not but what I look more than a fly beside you. You could pick me up in they gert arms, I reckon?"
"I suppose I could for that matter. I carried a pig yesterday—lifted un clean up an' got un on my back; but it took two other chaps to move it. 'Twas Agg and Tapson. 'Here, let me get to his carcase,' I said; an' I lifted it clear into the butcher's cart, while they two was wiping their foreheads!"