“Well or ill, I should let you go with your tale. I’ll not stand between Priscilla and the truth, if she must have it—but I’ll not tell her it myself.”
“There again, you’re a puzzle, just a puzzle,” she said, with a quick return to her old manner. “Spoke like a man just then, ye. Other times ye’ll be half a man, or none at all. I’ve asked ye fifty times, Reuben, but could find myself no nearer an answer yet—what was left out of ye at birth?”
“Seems power to guide myself was left out of me,” he answered sharply. “Listen to me, Peggy! I’ve nothing much behind me to boast of—but I love Hirst’s lile lass.”
“Ay, so ye said,” put in the other drily. “It scarce helps me, Reuben, to hear it twice. For there’s my own life, as it happens, as well as yours to reckon with.”
Gaunt felt like a man whose feet are caught by the bog. The clean, dry land was near to him; but his feet were chained, and it was hard to pluck them out.
As for Peggy, she was ready to drift into any mood, and past days returned to her with sudden clearness.
“Do ye mind the day we went to Linsall Fair? ’Twas years ago, Reuben, but I mind it still. You bought a ring off a pedlar, and you set it on my finger. Lord, how it all comes back!” she broke off, looking softly at him, so that her likeness to her mother was altogether lost. “There was a young moon over the fell-top, and folk were dancing on the green; and you put the ring on my finger, and my heart went all soft and shameless. Reuben, you told me—”
“Told you we were wedded; and we laughed. Ay, I remember, Peggy!”
And so they fell to quiet talk of bygone times. Peggy wondered at her weakness, and Gaunt could not fathom the meaning of his newly-wakened liking to be with this lass when he should have been at Good Intent.
It was then that Billy the Fool guided Cilla to the thorn-bush where the mother-blackbird sat upon her nest; but neither Gaunt nor Peggy saw the stricken face that watched them for a moment between the twigs, then disappeared.