“Thank ye, no, Mr. Gaunt,” he said at last, with desperate sobriety. “I’m busy as can be with thinking o’ Miss Good Intent. She wouldn’t like to see either of us drinking ale at this hour of a spring morning.”
“Give you good day again, Billy,” said Gaunt, his little sense of humour leaving him.
“Ay, glad to give ye good day,” answered Billy, and watched Gaunt follow the line of the grey street.
Billy sat on beneath the elm tree and hoped for better things than Reuben Gaunt could ever bring him. Yet he looked wistfully from time to time, first at the inn-front, then at his pipe.
“They’re heartsome matters, now, are a half-pint of beer and a pipe o’ baccy. Ye’d own to yourself, Billy—now, wouldn’t ye?—that they were heartsome matters,” he murmured.
Reuben Gaunt, meanwhile, had turned up the lane that led to Good Intent. He knew that John Hirst would be at Shepston market, and was sure therefore of his welcome at the farm. He did not get as far as the house, however, for Priscilla was standing in the home-croft as he came through the stile. From sheer frolic she had donned a sun-bonnet, pretending that this April sunshine was overwarm to bear uncovered. The bonnet was pink, and her simple gown was lavender-blue, and she looked, to Gaunt’s eyes, the trimmest and the bonniest maid that he had seen in all his travels.
She was feeding a noisy multitude of hens and turkeys, and it was pleasant to see how carefully the bigger birds refrained from stealing from the fowls—nay, left the tit-bits to them often, and showed altogether the behaviour of a big, good-tempered dog towards a small and fussy one.
It was the turkey-cock that first warned Priscilla of Gaunt’s approach. The “prideful devil,” as Billy the Fool had called him, was proving his right to the title in good earnest. His tail was spread, his wattle grew and grew until the head of him was crimson as a wild-rose berry when autumn’s sunshine lights the hedgerows. He made towards Gaunt, moreover, with little steps that in their fretfulness and self-importance suggested comedy.
Priscilla turned to learn the reason of this outbreak, and her eyes met Reuben’s. A delicate flush and a look of pleasure in the girl’s candid face was Gaunt’s welcome—a greeting which John Hirst would have understood had he been there.
“Good day,” she said sedately, and turned to feed her birds again.