"Doan't!" said Tom in an odd husky voice. "'Tain't worth while."
He looked so unhappy that Meg, still more perplexed, went on hastily: "After all, it doesn't much matter, does it? Perhaps when Barnabas comes home, he will be able to find——"
"Barnabas!" said Tom.
The indignation in his voice startled her this time, woke her up to a faint realisation of what he meant.
"He's over good for 'ee; and he swears by ye; but, an' ye tak' advice, ye'll not tell lies to him. He thought ye ower heavenly mind to warm to any man!" cried Tom, with a laugh that ended in something very like a groan. "Ye may break his heart times, an' he'll not hear aught against ye, or have ye fashed, cos he holds ye o' finer make than himself, or all of us. O' finer make! an' ye'll take a love-letter when he's away, fro' a black-faced Jew."
"Tom!" she cried, shuddering with disgust, "how can you, how dare you, say such things to me?" And at the warmth in her tone his cooled.
"Ye see I believed in 'ee too!" he said. "I thought ye weren't the soart to tell lies to save—I was going to say your skin; but it warn't even that, for ye couldn't ha' thought I'd harm ye."
"I told no lies. I never do!" said Meg.
"No! Happen ye call 'em some'ut else where ye come from; but it ain't my affair! Ye needn't be feared I want to interfere with 'ee. I never will again," said Tom. And Meg, too much offended at the time to attempt further vindication, yet recognised, with a sense of increased loneliness later, that he kept his word. She might be as late as she chose, she might eat or fast; Tom's kindly teasing had ceased. She missed it even while she resented his suspicions with an almost scornful wonder and disgust.
Meg had absolutely no instinct for flirtations, her love and hate were both deep; but when china vessels and iron pots journey together, we know which gets the worst of a collision; and her moral rectitude wasn't all the support it should have been.