Again he tugged, but the old root would not give; so David grasped Priscilla’s father by the middle, and “Yoick!” he cried, and they pulled together. The root left its hold, more suddenly than they had counted on, and David, being the hinder of the two, bore the full brunt of the farmer’s fall.
David got to his feet by and by, and coaxed the wind back into his lungs. Farmer Hirst was laughing till the tears ran down his ruddy face; the men were laughing, too; so David, soon as he found breath, fetched out that slow, deep body-merriment of his.
“We got him out o’ground! Oh, ay, we daunted yond old briar-root!” said he.
Whereat the four laughed so heartily that a pair of curlews—just returned, like Reuben Gaunt, from sojourning God knew where—got up from the further side of the fence, and went crying toward the moor.
“Briar-roots are the devil and all,” said Hirst, “when ye come to clean a hedge-bottom.”
“Bear bonnie roses all the same, when June comes in,” ventured the blacksmith, not telling Hirst that wild roses reminded him, too often for his peace of mind, of Priscilla. “Pity to stump ’em up, say I, and pity came of my lending my hand to the job just now.”
He made pretence to rub himself, as if the farmer’s bulk had raised painful sores on him. It is easy to laugh when the spring’s a-coming in, and the four workers startled a black-faced ewe that was near to her first lambing season.
“Get away wi’ your jests, David,” answered Farmer Hirst. “D’ye think I want to have my lambs dropped hasty-like in the ditch down yonder?”
Yet by and by, when they had worked their fill at the hedge-cutting, and it was dinner-time, David drew the farmer aside. He had not known till now what had brought him to the fields here, instead of to the smithy where he had urgent work to do. For the blacksmith’s brain was like an eight-day clock that stands in the kitchen corner; it moved slowly—tick-tack, tick-tack, with sober repetition—but, when the moment came to strike the hour, there was never any doubt as to the time he had in mind.
“John Hirst,” he said, “ne’er mind your dinner yet awhile. I’ve somewhat lies on my chest, as a body might say.”