‘Why, Lizzie, my girl, where on earth have you been to?’ exclaimed her aunt, Mrs Barnes, as she appeared on the threshold. Mrs Barnes’ late husband had been brother to the very Isaac Barnes, once poacher, now gamekeeper on Farmer Murray’s estate, and there were scandal-mongers in Corston ill-natured enough to assert that the taint was in the blood, and that young Laurence Barnes was very much inclined to go the same way as his uncle had done before him. But at present he was a helper in the stables of Mavis Farm.
‘I’ve been along the marshes,’ said Lizzie, ‘gathering cockles, and they gave me sixpence for them up at the farm; and oh, aunt! I met Miss Rosa on my way back, and she says Larry must take me up to the big barn this evening to their harvest-home supper.’
Laurence Barnes was seated at his mother’s table already occupied in the discussion of a huge lump of bread and bacon, but as the name of his master’s daughter left Lizzie’s lips it would have been very evident to any one on the look-out for it that he started and seemed uneasy.
‘And what will you be doing at a dance and a supper, my poor girl?’ said her aunt, but not unkindly. ‘Come, Lizzie, sit down and take your dinner; that’s of much more account to you than a harvest merry-making.’
‘Not till Larry has promised to take me up with him this evening,’ replied the girl gaily, and without the least fear of a rebuff. ‘You’ll do it, Larry, won’t you? for Miss Rosa said they’d all be there, and if she didn’t see me she’d send round to the cottage after me. She said, “Tell Larry I insist upon it; she did, indeed!”’
‘Well, then, I’m not going up myself, and so you can’t go,’ he answered roughly.
‘Not going yourself!’
The exclamation left the lips of both women at once. They could not understand it, and it equally surprised them. Larry—the best singer and dancer for twenty miles round, to refuse to go up to his master’s harvest-home! Why, what would the supper and the dance be without him? At least, so thought Mrs Barnes and Lizzie.
‘Aren’t you well, Larry?’ demanded the blind girl, timidly.
‘I’m well enough; but I don’t choose to go. I don’t care for such rubbish. Let ’em bide! They’ll do well enough without us.’