“Oh, knock all that nonsense out of your head, lad! You’ll not take fever, if that is what’s troubling you. Tell them I may be home in a week, to stir you all out o’ your laziness, or it may be a fortnight; it depends on whether I’m needed here.”
Peter’s wits were never overstrong, and terror had not sharpened them; yet even he was conscious of a new note in the master’s voice—a note less easy-going than of old, and fuller of authority. The lad glanced down the croft, then up at Reuben, but still held his ground; it was plain that he wished to get as far away from Ghyll as possible, and yet that he was held by some counter fear.
“Is’t true what they say, sir,” he blurted out, “that a body can catch th’ fever by looking at another body as has been nigh it?”
“No,” said Reuben, with a laugh that heartened Peter a little, “it’s a lie. Most fears are lies, my lad, and you can tell them so from me down at Marshlands yonder.”
“Thank ye, sir,” said Peter, laying down his bundle in the wet, and making off with a speed that recalled the haste of Dan Foster’s lad not long ago.
When Gaunt stepped into the farm, carrying his dripping bundle, Widow Mathewson looked up from her baking board.
“What have ye there, Reuben?”
“Clean linen and a change of clothes. It sounds naught much, mother, but, Lord, how I need to get into them! Seems the doctor knew how I’d needed them, for ’twas his thought to send them up.”
The widow laid down her rolling-pin, rubbed some of the flour from her arms, then looked at Gaunt with her steady, hazel eyes. “That means ye’re ready for flitting. Well, I mustn’t grumble, though I’ll miss you sorely. Life’s made up of settlings in an’ flittings out, as the throstle said when she watched her fledged brood fly.”
“But I’m not flitting, mother, not for a week or two yet.” He was touched by the loneliness, the independence and the pride of her appeal. “I’m needed here, ye see—you alone in the house and farm work to be seen to—and, besides, they’d be scared to death at Marshlands if I gave them no time to get used to the notion of my coming back. They’d all be down with fever the next day, or think they were.”