Cilla was quiet, but eager. “We all know his father’s story—but what of his mother? Has she no say in the matter?”
“Why, yes, she was well enough, and a long way too good for old Gaunt; but she died when Reuben was a bairn. She never had a chance to better his wild upbringing.”
And then, at last, after an uneasy silence, the yeoman got to the heart of the matter. His fondness for Cilla was embarrassing at times; it gave him too keen an insight into any change of mood in her, and he had guessed the secret of this restlessness which had fallen on her since the news of fever came from Ghyll.
“Lile lass,” he said, “I’ve been thinking a deal to-night, and I wish more than ever that ye’d persuaded David the Smith to stay on i’ Garth. Whether ye wouldn’t have him, or whether his big hulking shyness stood up between the two o’ ye and wouldn’t let him ask ye, ’tis not for me to say; but I’m more than ever sorry, lass, as things have turned out.”
“Why, father?” A delicate colour had crept into Cilla’s face, but there was that steady light in her eyes which the yeoman feared.
“Well, Reuben is free to go wandering again—”
“No, no!” Her treason to the dead seemed baser than it had in the silence of the road outside. This outspoken hint of it from another showed all its meanness to the girl’s sensitive fancy. “No, father! We must not talk of such—of such foolishness. Reuben may be dead before the month is out.”
“Well, yes,” said Hirst, soberly. “Maybe I spoke out o’ season, Cilla. There, lass! Gaunt has done what I dursn’t, and I’m shamed to own to it, and I’m hoping he’ll come through it, as he deserves.”
So then Cilla came and sat at his knee, for the intimacy between these two was full of understanding. Her father was quick to blame himself for the few ungenerous thoughts that came his way, and she knew how hard it was for him at any time to speak well of Reuben Gaunt.
“And not only that,” she went on. “Reuben may be this or that, father—but he has seen Peggy o’ Mathewson’s die, and he has helped to bury her, so the doctor tells me, and—and, father, I think we ought to leave him with his thoughts; they’ll be sad ones.”