"Good-night, Joel," she said, and made as if to go. "I'm sorry you're so cross. It's spoilt my day, my only holiday; good-night."
But he flung his arm round her, his anger vanishing like a cloud that has discharged its ill humours.
"Stay," he said. "I know I'm a brute. But let us go back. There'll be more dancing, and we'll trip the moon up into the sky and out of it again. I'm a better dancer than Peter. He's too heavy on his toes—you found that, eh?—rather a clumsy fellow, too loose in the make to be a comfortable partner. Come back. Come and see the rockets and torches. We'll have a good time, lots of fun. Who knows whether we'll see the wakes together again?"
She relented at once, dissolved like snow in the sun, when she heard the pleading tones of his voice.
"But I promised great-granny."
"Stay," he repeated, and began to draw her back to the forest.
"I daren't, Joel; she'd never forgive me."
"Only a little longer."
"Nay."
Yet why should she not stay? Her great-grandmother had enjoyed such occasions to the full when she was young. Why should Lucy not do the same? She might go home, bid the old woman good-night, and when the doors were barred, and the candles out, and Mistress Lynn thought she was safely in her bed, slip downstairs, and escape by the cow-house. She asked Joel what he thought of her plan.