“I cannot bear to see the lile good lass, and never speak a warning word!” he cried.
Out of the silence presently there came a cry—Priscilla’s call to Gaunt, in token that she had crossed the home-croft in safety—and David bent an ear and listened.
“Only a daft old barn-owl,” he muttered. “Birds and their ways, and maids and their ways—I’m weary of ’em.”
David was unlike himself, and knew it. It was well for growing lads to be peevish at these times, but he was old enough, he had fancied, to have learned some common sense. So he squared his shoulders; and his face, in the gathering dusk, wore the look he had when he was driving a stake into the ground or was hammering a horseshoe on the anvil.
“I’ll go,” he said. “Promises run down the wind, they say, and catch in any hedgerow—but not David’s promises to Farmer Hirst. Bless me, and there’s a letter in my pocket all the while, and I’d forgotten it!”
He set out in earnest this time for Good Intent, not heeding the beauty of the grey night; and he came to the wicket-gate that opened on the garden at the rear of the farmstead, and went down the five steps leading to the door, and knocked.
“Step in, David!” sounded Hirst’s big voice. “I knew you’d come, lad, though I said you wouldn’t.”
David the Smith opened and went in; and he felt himself forlorn, seeing the look of things within doors. On one side the hearth, with its back to him, was the hooded chair in which the farmer took his ease at nights; and a rough-coated elbow showing round the corner of the oak, a haze of blue smoke curling up toward the rafters, witnessed to Hirst’s presence. On the other side, facing David, as he entered, sat Priscilla, her work on her lap, her eyes on the fire that threw quiet, homely patches of ruddy light and sombre shadow round about the room. The farm-dog, Fanny, stretched at full length beside the fender, was too full of dreams to do aught save wag her tail in a feeble way, though she knew that one of her oldest friends had come.
It was home, thought David; no subtle detail was wanting to complete this picture of fair prosperity and honest ease and fellowship—no detail lacking to save David an added pang. He had been content, till lately, with his work, his freedom, his trim little house with its garden sloping down to the stream; to-night he saw only the warm look of Good Intent, and by contrast his life seemed barren and unprofitable. He longed for a lass of his own, and a dog stretched half the length of the ingle-nook, and maybe the cry of a bairn as it waked in its mother’s arms and fell asleep again.
“Come forrard, lad!” cried the farmer, getting himself out of his chair with a cheerful groan—for he was stiff after the long day’s work. “None so welcome at Good Intent, come late or early. Fanny,” he broke off, stirring the dog with his foot, “wilt get thy great body under settle, thou jade, and let a better than thee draw up a chair?”