These two, mother and daughter, lived alone at Ghyll, doing their own farm work—even to scything of the one small meadow when haytime came. They went never at all to church or chapel; they were distant in their greetings when they chanced at rare intervals to meet their neighbours; they were pagan, self-reliant and alone, and it was said that Peggy was wild as the widow, and never a stiver to choose between them.
Widow Mathewson was at her door this morning, watching the lambs play antics with their mothers in the fields below. Big-boned she was, and tall, and her face wore that lined, hard look of weather which women rarely show.
She ceased to watch the lambs by and by, and her eyes wandered to the track that led to Garth—the track that glistened like a living thing beneath the April sun. Far down the slope of the path a slight, dark speck appeared, growing each moment till it showed itself as a man’s figure. The man was walking fast, steep as the field-track was, and Widow Mathewson laughed quietly when he came near enough to show the eagerness of his every movement.
She left the doorway, and went and rested her arms on the rail that guarded the potato-patch from the fields. And she waited, with a look on her face such as David Blake had worn, three days ago, when he swore outright in the presence of daft-witted Billy.
The man was so full of his own thoughts that he did not see Widow Mathewson until the path had brought him to within a score of yards of her garden railing; and then, for shame’s sake, he had to come forward with a jauntiness that was obviously ill-assumed.
“I’m here to give you good day,” he said. “After five years, ’tis only neighbourly to call.”
“You’re here to see Peggy, and know it, Reuben Gaunt. We didn’t part such friends five years since that you need come trying to smooth me down with lies.”
Gaunt reddened, and flicked a hazel-switch uneasily against his riding-breeches.
“Lies go terrible smooth into a woman’s ear when she loves ye,” went on the other; “but they’re puffs o’ wind when she loathes the sight of a man.”
“I find a deal of pleasant home-coming welcomes,” said Gaunt, stung into bitterness.