“Yes, I shall stay,” he answered.
Her eyes fell, in answer, not to the words, but to the tone. And, because she had been wont to look all folk bravely in the eyes, she grew impatient of her shame-facedness.
“I cannot idle all the morning through,” she said. “I’ll give you good day, Mr. Gaunt, and get to my housework.”
David Blake, meanwhile, had turned aside before he reached his smithy, and had crossed, by the stile at the road-corner, into the field where Farmer Hirst was busy hedge-cutting with his men.
“Hallo, David! Followed me up, like, have ye?” roared Hirst, as he chanced to turn his head while the smith was still half a field away.
“Ay, I like the sound and the look of cutting a thorn-hedge,” answered David, as he drew nearer. “Thought I’d come and set ye straight if ye were showing faulty hedge-craft.”
The two farm-men turned with their bill-hooks in their hands. They nodded at David and grinned at his simple pleasantry. Lithe, clean-built fellows they were, both of them, such as they breed within the boundaries of Strathgarth, and they were friends and, save in the matter of wage-earning, they were roughly the equals of their master.
“Come ye, then,” chuckled the farmer. “See what we’ve done a’ready, David! See how trim and snug the whole line lies of it! Nay, not that way, lad!” he broke off, as one of the hands began to lay a stout hawthorn stem, sawn half-way through, all out of line with its fellow on the left.
He bent the branch as he would have it lie, then stepped aside—for a heavy man, Hirst was oddly active in his movements—and set to work to pluck a root of dog-briar from its deep bed. Twist and turn the root in his hands as he might, it would not budge.
“’Tis all these durned leather gloves,” he said, throwing his gauntlets off. “They keep the prickles out, David—or reckon to—but when a body wants his naked hands—well, let him wear them naked.”