“Oh, Reuben, I am daft!” she said, putting both hands into his. “Thought I could hold my own, I, and I’m thinking only o’ ye. Will ye come back, or will ye not—and are ye true, or are ye not—and all such moonshine nonsense. Reuben, I’ve been happy these last days. Ye wouldn’t spoil it all?”
“Not lightly,” said Reuben, as he kissed her good-by, and went down the moor.
The next day Peggy was listless and out of heart. She fancied the heat ailed her, though until now she had been careless of all extremes of weather. Widow Mathewson noticed the change, as she smoked her pipe by the hearth that night.
“Lile lass,” she said, “ye’re fretting for Reuben.”
Peggy shivered, and crept nearer the peat-fire. “Oh, I’m thinking all o’ ghosts, mother. He has to be away, and the fool I am to be needing him so, and there’s many a mile ’twixt this and his home-coming.”
The widow smiled, but her face was full of compassion. “I loved your father i’ that way, Peggy. He was niver much to lean on, but I missed him sorely when he went down kirkyard lane.”
“You’re sneering at Reuben again, mother.” The girl’s temper was frayed to-day and broken at the edges.
“Nay, nay. I begin to think Reuben’s stauncher than your father iver war. Happen ye’ve come to your own, Peggy, for a man as can win a fell-race o’ the Linsall sort has summat behind it all. Ye’ll shape him by and by. Oh, ay, ye’ll shape him. Men are all like a blunt bit o’ millstone grit; they need a chisel, they.”
Peggy o’ Mathewson’s crept nearer still to the peats. The light of the one lamp shone on the pewter and the delftware that was Ghyll’s special pride, and the fire-glow played bo-peep in corners of the living-room.
“I scarce feel like a bride, mother,” said Peggy, after a long silence.