Gaunt did not tire, however. He was to and fro between Ghyll Farm and Marshlands every other day, and in between was journeying to Shepston, with Peggy beside him in the smart, high-wheeled gig which was known by sight to all the dales-folk.
Widow Mathewson said little these days, save to grumble that Peggy left her three parts of the work to do; but at last she was losing her distrust of Gaunt. His gaiety appealed to her, for she had known little of it in her time; his forgetfulness of all past differences between them was generous, though she only half admitted it; above all, her headstrong lass showed likely to settle down at last with a decent roof above her and the right to show that pride which was ingrained in her.
“Maybe he’s as well as another man,” she would mutter, as she nursed her pipe by the hearth and waited for Peggy to return, “though that’s saying little enough. Come to think on’t there’s so few worth choosing that a lass is a’most bound to make a lile fool of herseln when it comes to marriage.”
They were to be married at the end of two months. That was the utmost Mrs. Mathewson would grant when Reuben pressed for an earlier day.
“If your fancy lasts for two months, it’ll maybe last longer,” she said drily, in answer to Gaunt’s pleading. “My lass shall be thrown at no man’s head, Reuben, least of all at yours.”
To Peggy the waiting-time seemed short. Her child’s dreams up among the winding peat-ways of the moor, her woman’s yielding to the glamour of this first and last romance which Gaunt embodied, were of the same fibre.
One day—it was a week after Linsall Fair—he did not take her with him to Shepston. He had a fancy to buy a chestnut mare he knew of, and keep it as a wedding-gift for her, letting her find it unexpectedly in the stable when he brought her home to Marshlands. She could ride bareback already; he would teach her afterwards to sit a side-saddle.
Between Garth and Shepston he came face to face with Cilla round a bend of the dusty road, and pulled his horse up.
“You have heard the news?” he asked, feeling oddly ill at ease.
“I hear so little. It is not father’s way nor mine.” Cilla’s glance rested quietly on him, and she stood a little straighter than her wont, with an air of withdrawal. “If ’tis the fever you mean, of course we’ve heard of it. They talk of nothing else these days in Garth.”