“Best care for me more instead of less,” laughed Reuben. “I’ve no heed, myself, for geese walking over a grave.”
“It was silly, I own. There, ye’ve had kisses enough and to last—”
“Until to-morrow?”
“Well—maybe—if ye come not too early, while I’m milking the cows—or not overlate, when the house will need looking to, after all the work I’ve given mother to-day. There, Reuben—oh, there and there, if ye must better one good kiss. Good night, Reuben.”
Gaunt swung down the moor. The moon stood silver-gold in the middle of the blue sky. A sheep got up beneath his feet. He startled a grouse from its bed among the heather. Far down below him he could see a light set like a little star above the porch of Marshlands.
“They’re used to late home-comings o’ nights,” he laughed. “There’ll be fewer such when Peggy comes to Marshlands.”
CHAPTER XVII
WHATEVER doubt Widow Mathewson might have of Gaunt’s constancy, he himself felt none. On the morning after Linsall Fair he summoned his housekeeper, told her that Marshlands was to have a mistress at last, and gave orders that the disused parlour, full of faded hangings and rusty furniture unrenewed since his mother came here as a bride, should be turned out in readiness for the purchases he meant to make this week in Shepston. The best bedroom, disused, too, was to be treated in like fashion. Now that his mind had found an anchorage, Reuben was eager, businesslike, impatient of delays.
His housekeeper said little; but she smiled often when his back was turned, and shook her head with the foreboding that was her only luxury.
“He’s like a lad going off to buy a gun, or a rod, or some such make o’ toy,” was her thought “Oh, ay, he’s keen-set on t’ notion, but it winnun’t last no more than a week. Niver met a man to tire as soon as the master.”