An older and more constant playmate than Gaunt of Marshlands sang to her—sang blithe and high—through the mistal-door; but she scarcely heard the throstle, for Gaunt brought news from the beyond.
“Where have you been these years past?” she asked, moving restlessly from foot to foot.
“Everywhere, I fancy,” laughed the other. “I’ve seen the world, as I always meant to do; and a queer world I’ve found it.”
As a child wipes the school-day’s sums from its slate, Priscilla lost the record of her working and her playtime hours. The grey serenity of Garth, the sweetness of its roadside gardens, the slow, rich gossip of its folk—these things went by her. She forgot the low, musical humming of the churn, the look of the butter as it lay, round and golden as a kingcup, on the stone tables of the dairy. She heard no longer the splash of milk into the foamy pail, the lowing of the kine as they gave their evensong of praise.
Not restless now, she leaned against the stall, her eyes wandering now and then to Gaunt’s, then returning to the mistal-yard and the croft beyond. She was listening to this man who had spent five years beyond the limits of Garth village, and his tales enthralled her. In an absent way she wondered that those well-known fields, the familiar yard, had never seemed so small as now.
Reuben Gaunt was talking well. The picture of the girl, her lissome outline framed by the oaken stall, her hands clasped above her head, the lights and shadows of the mistal playing constantly about her eager eyes—these might well have moved a duller wit than Gaunt’s to make the most of itself. And, when he stopped, Priscilla was silent, her head thrown further back and her glance going out and out, over the grey field-walls of Strathgarth, over its dingles and its hills—out to the borderland, and across into the unknown.
“You have come back suddenly,” she said at last. “None knew in Garth that you were coming home, or we must have heard of it.”
“I chose to return unawares, and see what sort of welcome Garth would give me without preparation.—And, gad, I learned from David Blake quite soon enough,” he finished, with an easy laugh.
“And shall you stay among us?”
He had been watching her during that long silence. Faults in plenty the man had, but in his way he could understand the finer lines of beauty; and now, as he met Priscilla’s eyes, he found her exquisite—something as faultless, and yet as natural, as a harebell swaying to the wind.