‘What do you mean by that? Why don’t you speak plain?’
‘And I will speak plain, Mr Prosser, though I don’t know where your eyes have been if you haven’t seed it for yourself. Miss Marion’s soft on that Fellows, and he knows it and takes advantage on it.’
Prosser gave an uneasy laugh. ‘You don’t get me to believe that,’ he said.
‘You can believe it or not, gaffer,’ said Harris. ‘It’s all the same to me. I’m only telling you of what I knows, and what I’ve seen with my own eyes. When Daisy was dying that Fellows was in your own kitchen and the two of them kissing one another, so took up they never saw me coming. And that’s the truth, as I’m standing here!’
Prosser could only stare at him.
‘You ought to have known the name that chap has with women. There’s Mr Hind’s daughter over at the Pound House; there’s George Malpas’s wife, not counting those that was never found out. He’s a proper young bull, that Fellows, and no mistake!’
The farmer left him in a fury. He found Marion laying the supper-table in the dining-room. Ethel was crouched by the fire reading a book of fairy-tales.
‘You go out into the kitchen, Ethel,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to Marion.’
‘I’m so comfy here, dad,’ said the child sleepily.
‘Do as you’re bid!’ he shouted, and Ethel, frightened, left the room.