“We’ll risk it, Reuben! I seem to have no wish at all, save just to dance and dance wi’ ye on Linsall Green. ’Tis my head, maybe, that’s light and not my heels.”
They were on the road now, and Peggy’s mood grew lighter still as she saw the booths, the tents, the knots of chattering country folk that covered Linsall Green. She relished the open admiration shown her as she passed; she welcomed the sly gibes of a few ill-natured and plainer women; for she knew that Reuben would like her better if she were the admitted beauty of the day. This strapping lass with the clear judgment and the capable hands whenever life’s work had to be done, was in playtime as simple as a child. Gaunt was her good fairy to-day; she loved him with a passionate devotion that surprised her in quieter moments; in all things to-day she wished to please him.
They went into the tavern whose front stretched orderly, and long, and grey, the whole width of the green. Gaunt made her drink red wine with their meal; the taste of it was thin and reedy to Peggy, but she understood vaguely that Reuben thought it a fine thing he was doing. The glass from which she drank it, was shapelier, too, than any she had seen, and she praised the wine, and the meal, and the sunlight that lay white on the white street outside the window.
Peggy laughed quietly as they went out into the glare again. “If I never enjoy a day again,” she said, “I mean to take my fill o’ this one.”
Again Gaunt felt a touch of uneasiness but shrugged his shoulders, as his way was, and thought no more of it. If he had been bred nearer to the Border, he would have said that Peggy o’ Mathewson’s was fey; as it was, he wondered that he had played yes-and-no with this girl. Her beauty, her high spirits, the disregard she showed for all admiration but his own, were pleasant to the man. For months he had been playing with his promise to Cilla of the Good Intent that he would marry Peggy. Well, who knew what might happen on this fine day in Linsall?
“Peggy,” he said, as they threaded their way across the green, “you need a string of corals round your neck, to set off all the bonnie rest o’ you. I saw a necklace as we came past the far booth yonder.”
And a wonderful booth it was, this wooden counter set on trestles, with a span of canvas overhead to keep sun or rain away. There were toys on it, and flat-irons, and housewives’ “find-alls;” there were wooden pipes and clay pipes, and snuff boxes. Betrothal rings, and wedding rings, and teething rings, lay neighbours to packets of simples warranted to remedy many ailments. The whole sum of life—its hopes, its absurdities, its random search after pleasure or after ease from pain—seemed to lie within the narrow confines of the booth.
Gaunt took down one of the coral necklaces, and the woman standing behind the counter gave the pair of them a keen glance.
“How much?” asked Gaunt.
The woman’s thoughts were rapid. Were they brother and sister? No! It would have been sixpence in that case. Had he just met with the girl, and was he playing with a fancy? She thought not. That would have meant a shilling. Were they newly-pledged to each other?