She broke off with a laugh. Her dear, brave eyes were twinkling with mischief, with a spice of that wholesome devilry which no healthy woman loses till her death.
“How does your man-of-all-jobs frame?” asked Gaunt.
“Oh, as well as men ever do—naught to boast of at the best.”
“Then I’ll give him a piece of my mind before I ride down.”
“Nay, that you won’t! The lad’s well enough, Reuben. His big fault, if I must own to ’t, is that he willun’t let me do my share o’ the work. ’Tis all the grand lady he’s making me, and I was never reared to idleness. Shall be furnishing a parlour, I, if all this mak o’ nonsense goes on, and sitting wi’ a bit of fancy-work i’ my lazy lap, and thinking how many ailments I’ve gotten, like Widow Lister down at Garth.”
Gaunt rode home that day, as on many others, with a pleasant memory of Mrs. Mathewson’s laughter, the smoothing of the deeper lines about her face, the power he had of drawing her mind away from griefs buried long ago.
This luxury of bringing comfort to other folk was growing dearer to him. It had been left to him to find out, unaided, that he had the gift; he had had no help when first he blundered into the knowledge. He was the stronger now for this lack of aid, and a quiet, yet buoyant confidence was replacing his old, haphazard jauntiness.
He was often at Good Intent, when work about the farm was done and he had leisure to stroll down for a pipe with Yeoman Hirst. Cilla would move about the house at these times, doing little, needless work of setting things to rights against the morrow; or she would sit beside the hearth, and intercept grave glances from Reuben—glances which she answered with the same look of question and of hope. It was their waiting-time, just as it was waiting-time for the frozen pastures; spring would have to step in before they found the answer to their riddle.
“Gaunt grows shapelier,” the yeoman would say, after one of these fireside evenings.
And Cilla would laugh. “He was always shapely enough,” she would reply demurely.