“Trouble is as it’s taken, David. If ye go forth from Good Intent without a something good and mellow in your inwards—why, bless me, there’s no cheer left in Garth.”
Priscilla was glad of the excuse to put her sewing down and busy herself with David’s comfort.
“I’ll leave you to your talk, father,” she said, after making sure that the farm’s hospitality—cherished for three centuries or more—was no way shamed to-night.
“Ay, but come back to lay a trifle of cheese, and cake, and oat-bread on the table. Have supped once already, I, and so has David, likely; but strong work comes strong to victuals, Cilla, at the second asking.”
CHAPTER IX
PRISCILLA gave some fleeting answer, and was gone. Up the stone stairway she went, and into the chamber beside the apple-tree, which, grown sturdy, was putting out green springtime leaves. A slim, white sickle moon lay helpless on her back—lighting in a softened fashion Garth’s fragrant valley. Through the opened casement the tempered April wind was fretting, as it blew the muslin blind aside. It was a night when fairies played about the land, when human ears, not deaf to all romance, heard music fluting through the dull world’s uproar.
Priscilla of the Good Intent leaned her two arms on the window-seat, and looked out upon the vagueness of the landscape lit by the young moon. She was thinking of her surrender to Reuben Gaunt, and wondering if she were happy in her choice; and always as she asked the question—pretending to herself that she asked it not at all—David’s shadow stole in between herself and happiness.
Gaunt himself about the same hour was standing on the threshold of his own house of Marshlands. He had turned the loose silver in his pocket on seeing the new moon, as superstition bade him, and had prayed for luck. He had tried, moreover, to think constantly of Cilla, but had thought instead of Peggy Mathewson, and of the lad she hoped to meet by the winding-path of Willow Beck. Peggy, when she had planted that retreating arrow in Reuben Gaunt, had judged wisely.
“Must see her once more to-morrow,” murmured Gaunt. “Must tell Peggy that new times have come in, and old ones gone—but who, in the deuce’s name, is the lad she means to take to nowadays?”
“Reuben is true at heart,” murmured Cilla, as she watched Garth Valley, grey under the sickle moon. “They wrong him, these Garth folk; he only wants love and a helping hand, and I have promised to give both.”