“It cannot be, David; yet, if you asked me why, I could not tell you. I know you love me. I know that Garth would seem lone and empty if you were not in it. What ails me, David? Tell me, and I’ll right it if I can.”
But David the Smith knew nothing of such matters. He had made his last effort—a hard one—and looked for a plain answer, yes or no. Even yet, had he known how to come nearer to the girl, instead of standing, very big and very bashful as he swung from one foot to the other—even yet he might have scattered those fantastic mists which Reuben Gaunt had woven about Priscilla’s life.
“There’s no two ways, Priscilla,” he said slowly. “Either ye’ll have me and make life a different matter; or ye won’t, and I’ll trust ye to find a likelier mate.”
“I’m not for mating—father has need of me—oh, David, David, I’m so fond of you, so loth to hurt you. Cannot you understand? I’m fond of you, but ’tis not just love—’tis not just love, David!”
Her voice was trembling, and she fingered restlessly the loose scraps of dough that littered the baking-board.
David stood motionless. The boy’s look, that is in every lover’s face, was gone. Not till now—now, when he had greatly dared and greatly lost—did he fully know what stake he had in Cilla’s love; and his face was hard and stern.
“You were kind to hear me out, little lass,” he said at last. “Ay, ye were always kind and comely. And I’ve lost ye. Perhaps I may go on keeping watch and ward about ye, as I always did? ’Tis little I can do in that way, but I’ve always liked to think I was watch-dog, like, ever since as a child ye would loiter round about the pool in Eller Beck, and I feared ye’d tumble in.”
“Ah, hush, David! You’ve been too good, and I am not strong enough for Garth. I dream too many dreams”—with a pitiful attempt to smile—“and I’ve lost the way of the love I might have had for you.”
“So you’re at Good Intent, David—and welcome!” shouted Yeoman Hirst, tramping in from the fields across the threshold of the sunlit doorway.
It was a jest in Garth that John Hirst, though no way deaf himself, fancied all other folk were so.