“Thank ye, but nay,” said Billy, after a pause. “I’ve a mind to shut down the forge, and then get home to bed among the heather. Terrible chap is Billy for playing all day, like. Then he needs his snug bed under sky-blankets, Yeoman. I’ll be bidding ye good night, I. There’s a laverock calls me up with the dawn, and he’ll miss me if I oversleep myself.”
“Cilla, is Billy a fool, or are ye and me?” asked Hirst, coming into the living-room and finding Priscilla tending the geraniums that lined the window-sill.
“Ye and me, father,” answered Cilla, with a queer little laugh. “I was thinking o’ Reuben Gaunt when you came in, and that was foolishness, you’ve always told me.”
Hirst settled himself in the hooded chair and stirred the peat-fire into a warmth that was no way needed. “So was Fool Billy. He wished the fever might take him up yonder at Ghyll.”
Cilla had been thinking her own thoughts; and she came and stood by the hearth, one hand on the mantel with its tea canisters and its china dogs. Through the heat, and the work of the farm, and the fever-dread, Priscilla was still the coolest and the bravest thing in Garth. She had something about her at all times of that starlight strength and constancy which Fool Billy courted as he slept among the heather-beds.
“I’ve wished better things for Reuben,” she said. “I was thinking, when you stepped in, father, that he’s done what few in Garth would do.”
“Won a fell-race, eh? To be sure, there’s summat i’ doing that; but, Cilla, there’s harder races i’ this life, and ye’re daft to think o’ Reuben.”
“Oh, father no! It was more than the fell-race I was thinking of. From what Dan said, he is staying at Ghyll. You need have no doubt of that, as you had this morning. How many would have done as much—how many, of all the folk we know? To run a race, father, and hear them clapping hands, and know your feet are going nimble underneath ye—that seems easy, and soon over, win it or lose it—but to wait beside a fever-bed—”
Hirst stirred uneasily in his chair. “Now, Cilla, you’re letting fancy play the dangment with you, same as Gaunt always did. Fancies are well enough, lass, but I’m for the day’s work, and beef and ale in between to prop up all the chancy-come-quick notions.”
“Reuben is for the day’s work,” said Cilla quietly. “A harder working day than I’ve had yet.”