Gaunt was taken by surprise. He hesitated, and flushed hotly as he recalled his last visit to Good Intent and the end of it. “Thank you, but I must be getting home,” he answered quietly.
The yeoman looked him in the face, and his smile broadened. “Now, Mr. Gaunt, I know what ye’re thinking of. Bygones are bygones, surely, if we’ll let them be. Say I was wrong if ye like, though I shouldn’t like to own to it. Step in, step in!”
Reuben could not fight against this bluff, hearty courtesy. The yeoman whistled a farm-lad round to take their horses, then broke into the house with a tread that shook the rafters. Cilla looked up from the table which she was laying for tea.
“I’ve brought a guest wi’ me, lile lass,” he said, with a genial roar. “He was a bit loth to enter, till I persuaded him he’d find a welcome.”
Priscilla was startled, and could not check the sudden flush of pleasure with which she greeted Reuben. All three were silent and ill at ease for a moment. The yeoman, seeing the look that passed between them, wondered if he had done well, after all, to bring Gaunt under his roof.
“The kettle is boiling, father,” said Cilla, quietly putting an end to their constraint. “See the cracknels I’ve baked for you to-day—”
Hirst interrupted her by taking one of the crisp bits of pastry between a thumb and forefinger. “I always had a soft tooth for sweetstuff,” he said. “Mr. Gaunt, there’s your seat. Cilla, don’t be long in mashing the tea; we’re a thirsty couple after the ride from Shepston.”
When tea was over, and they settled round the hearth, Gaunt felt a sense of well-being and content for which there seemed to be no clear reason. So many details went to the making of his comfort—Cilla’s face, as she sat half in the firelight, half in the dancing shadows—the yeoman’s ready laugh—even the lingering scent of buttered toast which carried homely memories with it. He had a bigger house at Marshlands, but had never found this fireside glamour there; and always, as they talked, he kept glancing toward Cilla, wondering that so slim a lass could bring so much peace about a hearth.
Hirst followed him out when at last he got to saddle. “First visits mean second ones, eh?” he said. “Step in any time ye’re passing Good Intent, and good night to ye, Mr. Gaunt.”
He listened to the hoof beats as they grew fainter up the road; then he went indoors with a sigh, and sat him down in the hooded chair, and beckoned Cilla to his knee.