“Nay,” answered David, not seeing the proffered hand. “I remember you well, Gaunt of Marshlands—and I’ll bid you good day, as I was ever glad to do.”
CHAPTER II
“THAT’S a pleasant sort of welcome, eh?” said Reuben Gaunt, as he watched David’s broad back disappear round the corner of the stables.
Priscilla’s interest was awakened already, and the smith had done an ill turn to his own cause by arousing her sympathy as well.
“You’ll find pleasanter welcomes here in Garth,” the girl answered, with that candour of thought and expression which in itself was dignity. “It was stupid of me to forget you, Mr. Gaunt, but I was so little, when you used to play big brother to me and show me all the wonders of the Dene.”
“I think it must not be Mr. Gaunt. The folk who like me call me Reuben, as you did once.”
Priscilla was vaguely disturbed. Softness of speech and manner she understood, for she had ever been a favourite with the landed gentlefolk of Strathgarth; and, because she understood them, she detected the false note in Gaunt’s would-be correctness. Yet she pushed the distrust aside; for this man had been away from Garth for five long years, had seen the mysteries hidden in the beyond, and doubtless he could tell her of them.
“We are older now,” she answered, a little smile belying her rebuke. “It must be Mr. Gaunt, or naught at all.”
“Well, then, it must be Miss Priscilla, too?”
“’Twould be fitting, I think. Five years are not bridged in a moment, and father tells me I’m a woman grown, though I feel a child when the spring comes in as it is coming now.”