Peggy and Gaunt moved away, as soon as the bargain was completed, and Pedlar Joe strolled up to the booth. Mother Lambert and he were good friends enough, despite professional rivalry.
“Looks as if Gaunt and wild-bird Peggy might make a match of it, after all?” he hazarded.
“So that’s Peggy o’ Mathewson’s?” answered the booth-woman. “I’ve not been nigh Linsall for four or five years, as ye know, and the lass was a little ’un then. I’d forgotten her. But Gaunt—there’s no forgetting him. Maybe he’s caught at last. I had the same fancy when I saw ’em step over the green.”
“Maybe,” chuckled the pedlar. “There’s allus a ‘maybe’ when folk mention Reuben Gaunt. Reuben—it means summat like water, if I call to mind—water that’s aye running under the brigg i’stead o’ crossing it to find a bit o’ safe-sure ground?”
Widow Lambert began to arrange her wares afresh. “Ay, like yourself, Joe—just like yourself. A caravan and a horse are steady matters, but a man wi’ a naked pack on his back should go by the name o’ Reuben.”
So then these two, vagrants both, fell into argument. Mother Lambert held the landed view of life, as befitted one who had a caravan and the right to fix her booth on the green for this one day. Pedlar Joe argued nimbly for the honour of his calling, and his views were those of the unlanded folk, coloured through and through by talk of freedom, of leisure in which to snare game—as being no man’s property in special—and of the joys attending one who, day in day out, had only his pack and himself to think of.
The dispute was ended only when Joe caught sight of a country lass, with a pretty face and an air of foolish vanity about her.
“I’ve to sell a scarf to Nancy Wood,” he said, with a confidential wink at the booth-woman. “She’s prattlesome now, and will buy; but she’ll have no heart for ’t once she’s seen Peggy o’ Mathewson’s.”
The pedlar sold his scarf; and the sun got down, half between noon and setting; and still the folk came pouring into Linsall. There was little news of the fever on this side of the moor-ridge; and, if there had been news, it would have been disregarded on this day when all the countryside was pledged to merriment.
“You’re blithe, Peggy!” said Gaunt, as they moved about the green together.