“Haste, ye call it? I’ve been for going ever since April came in, and putting off makes no job easier.”
“You’ll be glad to leave Garth, and see bigger countries?”
Priscilla could not understand herself. It seemed to her that she wished to hurt David in some way; she was surprised, ashamed, that news of his going should have such power to move her.
“Glad to leave Garth?” echoed David, his blue eyes wide with question. “Never that, lile Cilla. As ’tis, I should never have dreamed o’ going, if there’d been you to keep me here.”
“Could I keep you, David?”
“Oh, lass, don’t play wi’ me. I cannot bear it. I’ll go easier, all the same, for knowing all is finished between you and Gaunt o’ Marshlands.”
The iron was cold by this time, but Cilla passed it idly to and fro across the lilac gown. “Yes, all is finished—and—and I’m, oh, so glad, David! So very glad.”
In token of it she burst into tears, and David put an arm about her. “Lile lass, lile lass, let me bide i’ Garth. See the love I’ll give ye—asking so little, Cilla, and giving so much—giving so much, my lass.”
Priscilla looked up slowly, and regarded him with a long, steady glance. Life was so great a matter, and she was so weak to cope with it. If David would only give little to her, and ask her to give much in return—if he would be less patient, and more masterful—if he would find some way of taking her perplexities into his hands and riving them to pieces—if he would be devil-may-care for once, as Gaunt had been in the spring—the girl felt, in a helpless way, that then she might bid him stay in Garth.
It was their moment, and they let it pass. David was too diffident, seeing the girl here in the sunlight, to brush aside the cobwebs that hindered her true vision. It needed a rude hand to do it, and David’s hand was gentle, as the hands of good men are when they are free of smithy-work. Cilla was too unsure of everything to yield to a touch less sure than downright mastery. She waited for him to speak, and found that he was only looking at her—a more honest dog than Gaunt, maybe, but with the same waiting look in his eyes that Gaunt had carried since the jaunty days of spring.