“Fine-weather days don’t last, somehow,” went on the girl. “We thought the world held no two folk, Reuben, save ye and me? Well, we were fools for our pains.”
“They’re good to look back on now and then, all the same, those days.”
“Oh, where’s the use in your looking back? You feel no warmer in winter-time by thinking of last summer’s heat. Good to look back on? ’Tis easy for ye to talk, Reuben!”
Gaunt got to his feet, and helped her up. “Time we were moving, Peggy,” he said curtly—for he was fearing the girl’s despair and tenderness. “Yond horse of mine will be tearing the reins to bits, for I’ve kept him longer tied to a gate-post than he ever was before.”
“So ’tis good-by?” she said, moving beside him up the stream.
“Ay, for it must be. Bygones are bygones, Peggy.”
“True—if ye let ’em be. Never fear, Reuben! I’m as proud as Miss Good Intent, or maybe more so, and I’ll not trouble ye. Begin with your good life, lad, and see if ye can carry it! And for all reward I’ll ask to see Miss Priscilla’s face when a year’s gone by and the first bairn has come.”
Reuben winced. None in Garth would have given him credit for it; but, weak of purpose as he was, his love for Cilla touched clean, wholesome thoughts that had been stifled long ago. He resented Peggy’s easy speech touching his marriage and what might, or might not, come afterwards. The girl knew what was passing in his mind, and laughed—not carelessly, but with the sadness that was rooted deep in all her moods.
“Sorry to hurt ye, Reuben,” she said. “You’re a delicate sort o’ plant, and need a wall ’twixt ye and the wind.”
They were silent until Intake Farm was well in sight. Peggy halted in the dip of the fields where the ragged thorn-trees grew. She looked long and hard at Gaunt, and again there was a strange beauty in her face.