“I am thirty now,” she murmured, with a sigh, and went on writing.
The old man’s fingers moved quickly among the strips of cane, and, after a silence, without raising his head, he said: “Thirty, it means naught.”
“To those without understanding,” she rejoined drily.
“‘Tis tough understanding why there’s no wedding-ring on yonder finger. There’s been many a man that’s wanted it, that’s true—the Squire’s son from Bridgley, the lord of Axwood Manor, the long soldier from Shipley Wood, and doctors, and such folk aplenty. There’s where understanding fails.”
Faith’s face flushed, then it became pale, and her eyes, suffused, dropped upon the paper before her. At first it seemed as though she must resent his boldness; but she had made a friend of him these years past, and she knew he meant no rudeness. In the past they had talked of things deeper and more intimate still. Yet there was that in his words which touched a sensitive corner of her nature.
“Why should I be marrying?” she asked presently. “There was my sister’s son all those years. I had to care for him.”
“Ay, older than him by a thimbleful!” he rejoined.
“Nay, till he came to live in this hut alone older by many a year. Since then he is older than me by fifty. I had not thought of marriage before he went away. Squire’s son, soldier, or pillman, what were they to me! He needed me. They came, did they? Well, and if they came?”
“And since the Egyptian went?”
A sort of sob came into her throat. “He does not need me, but he may—he will one day; and then I shall be ready. But now—”