“Right!” cried Will the Driver. “Hand up your basket, Widow! Where must I set it down?”
“There! Not to guess a simple matter like that! Ye’ve to leave it at the first stile on your right after you’ve passed through Rakesgill. Mrs. Fletcher it’s for, and she’s wiser than you were a minute since, Will, for she knows it’s coming. Oh, and Will,” she added, her red cheeks dimpling with roguery, “it goes from one poor body to another, does this bit of a basket, and happen ye wouldn’t charge for it at either end.”
“Wouldn’t I?” said Will. “Want me to take it as my own private baggage, eh?”
“There’s only some roots of double-daisy in it, and a few plants of auricula, and a little, round Garth cheese. Mrs. Fletcher’s fond, as you might say, of flowers and cheese; ’tis all by way of a present to another lone widow woman—and she my own sister.”
“Some folk thrive on loneliness, ’twould seem,” laughed Will, putting the basket under the seat. “All right, Widow! I’ll leave it on the stile, and we’ll trust to Robin Goodfellow to pay.”
He started forward, got his team into the straight, then turned round to Cilla. “By your leave, Miss Priscilla, there’s some of your sex have longish tongues. I’m proud of being to time, and here we’ve wasted five whole minutes. No man likes bringing cattle home in a lather, but these beauties will have to go.”
“They’ll stand it, Will,” said Gaunt. “Never met a man myself who could better get a horse into shape and keep it so.”
Will the Driver showed what his team could do. Like a true dalesman, he was proud of his own trade, and Gaunt had found a sure way to his ear. Between the white and sunlit limestone walls they swung, and between hedgerows where the bird-cherry showed its glossy leaves. Little, tinkling streams flew by them; and, up above the roadway hedges or the roadway walls, the clean, sweet fells raked forward to the blue and fleecy sky.
To Priscilla it was a journey into the outskirts of that Beyond which tempted and enthralled her. The sunshine, the quick going of the coach, the deft, quiet interest which her companion aroused—all helped to round off this adventure into the heart of spring. They stopped at Rakesgill, to set down the scanty mail and a few odd packages, and to take up a passenger on the box seat. As at Garth, the villagers had met to see the mail-coach in, and Cilla watched the group, and listened to their banter, with a sense that the freshness of the growing year was blowing round their old-time jests.
Widow Fletcher was waiting at the stile—the first on their right hand as they trotted out of Rakesgill—and it was plain, from her red, plump cheeks and her cheery air, that she was own sister to Widow Lister of Garth.