“Was that your business, then, in Keta’s Well?” The girl’s laugh was low and happy.
“Yes.”
She glanced at him with that wild-bird look which her father had noted and distrusted weeks ago. Then she looked out again at the fell-tops and the pastures, which swung past on either hand in wide half-circles. The magical, blue sunset-time was spreading light fingers already about the hills and dimpled fields.
Gaunt did not know himself. Good thoughts came to him like a mystery as deep as this veil of evening that was clothing all the land. For this one day he loved Priscilla as a better man might do; he lacked only the courage to be true to another, at any hazard of his present happiness. For Reuben Gaunt had never learned, or had never cared to learn, that honesty is ever and ever like the tight, grey walls of Garth valley—foundationed well, well built, and proof against the winds of winter-tide. He loved Priscilla; that was all; and good love, for the moment, was his pleasure.
“Ah, I guessed I should see you here, Widow Fletcher,” the driver’s voice broke in. “What can I do for you this time, in a littlish way?”
The plump-cheeked woman was standing at the gate as if she had never left it since the morning. She was laughing, too, as if her face had kept its dimples all the day—a guess that came near to truth.
“Nay, I only want you to take the basket back. Lone widows are lone widows, aren’t they, Will?”
“Aye, and there’s a plague of them about, ’twould seem. They swarm like bees in June about this road to Garth. Terrible pranksome cattle, widows and horses, and terrible hard to deal with,” retorted the driver.
“We’re lonely, Will, though. Widows are always sorrowful and lonely. You’re thinking of charging for the carry of this basket home to Garth? Men-folk were always selfish.”
Will laughed, as Priscilla’s father might have laughed, giving innocent villagers the notion that thunder was springing from a clear and fleecy sky.