“I should be,” she answered, with a heedless laugh. “I’m free for a day—and I’m holding both hands out to catch whatever frolic comes.”
CHAPTER XVI
LINSALL was staid enough throughout the year; but, like Peggy Mathewson, she made the most of her big holiday. The cobbled inn-front, wide as it was, could hold no more farmers’ gigs; the stable-yard was full of traps; and those who rode in late on sturdy horses were forced to seek billets for their nags wherever a friendly farmstead offered hospitality.
The bridge, arched like a delicate, grey eyebrow above the peat-brown river, was white with faces which looked constantly toward the inn, as if watching for some spectacle. The Squire was there, and his womenfolk, rubbing shoulders with yeomen and their wives; farm-hands pressed close against the stonework of the bridge, and held their bairns to see what was going forward. The Green below was crowded, too, and men were running up the pastures that stepped briskly from the roadway to the moor. Only the road itself, from the fields right down to the inn-front, was clear of onlookers; and the dust of the highway showed hot and white as it made a lane between the folk.
It was time for the fell-race, and there were few dwellers in this land of climbing fields and overtopping hills whose hearts did not beat faster at prospect of the race. Of all their sports it was most in keeping with their daily lives. Each farmer, when he went to call the cattle into mistal, when he ploughed or won the hay-crop, was compelled to do his share of climbing; for all the fields at Linsall, save a few that lay along the river’s level, strode straight up-hill, straight down and up again. This fell-race indeed, was not so much a pastime as a test of endurance which has grown naturally out of their daily occupation, and the winner of it was counted the great man of the year.
“Reuben,” said Peggy o’ Mathewson’s, slipping a hand through his arm as they stood on the green, “the race is to start i’ less than a half-hour, and I’ve a fancy.”
“Let’s know it, lass. ’Tis not to-day I’m saying no to you, I reckon.”
“You must run, Reuben—and you must win.”
“You’re jesting? Why, I’m all out of practice—”
“Oh, you’re tough and hard! I’ve only to look at you to see you’re in condition. You used to win it easy enough i’ the old days, Reuben—try, just to please me.”