“Ay, my word, he’s merry!” muttered David ruefully.
“Mustn’t let her guess that ye and me are as thick as thieves,” said Hirst, subduing his voice with hardship. “Love’s as good as lost, David, when a lass knows her father wants the lad as much as she. Must run contrary, these maids, or else there’s no frolic in’t. I’d have their fathers choose their lasses’ mates, for my part; but they’d rather seek counsel from the first beggar coming to the door to ask for scraps.”
After supper—a quiet, unrestful meal to-night—David got up to say farewell.
“Thou’lt open to him, Cilla?” cried the farmer, feigning to be stiffer in the joints than the day’s work warranted. “Old bones are old bones, choose how you try to prove them young.”
Priscilla rose gravely, and opened the inner door; then went out into the porch, and stood looking at the crisp, clean night.
“I wouldn’t have troubled you,” said David awkwardly.
“’Tis no trouble, David; and yet, in other ways, you make great trouble for me.”
“Now, how’s that?” he asked, surprised into putting his hand on hers and drawing her into the roadway. “David make trouble for the lile lass? ’Twas not wont to be, Priscilla, before new times came in.”
“It is this way, David. You ask too much, and I cannot make a friend of you.”
“Seems a pity, lass, for a better friend you never had.”