“Cilla, the throstles are singing out-of-doors,” said he, bending an ear toward the open fields.
His meaning should have been clear; for, when a throstle sings across the reek of an open mistal-door, the human oddities of speech should be altogether lost, and the world’s tongue interpret all. Yet Priscilla missed it, and disdained the thrush’s clarion note.
“Ay, David, and the world is turning round about the sun, and the stars come out o’ nights, and I’ve to do my churning by and by. David, is there naught beyond your throstles and your stars and the sun that guides the world?”
“Naught,” answered David stolidly. “They’re life, Priscilla, and maybe when we’re hid beneath the sward we’ll know of bonnier things—but not just yet, I’m thinking.”
It was David’s moment, had he known it. It needed a touch, a glance, a right word spoken that should ring in tune with the spring; and while he halted there came a sound of whistling all across the mistal-yard. It was not like Farmer Hirst to turn back when once he had set off, and Priscilla wondered whose the footstep could be—the step that was quicker and lighter than her father’s.
“One of the farm-men, maybe,” muttered David, remembering, now that the opportunity was like to be lost, the one right speech he should have whispered into Priscilla’s ear.
“No—nor yet father’s. ’Tis a town-bred step, David. Cannot you hear the mincing tread, as if he thought the sweet yard-litter could hurt a body’s feet?”
“Ay, now you name it, so I can. Treads nipperty-like, as a cat does. Mistrust that sort of going, I. Who can he be, Priscilla?”
“Some stranger likely. Some one that’s never smelled the warmth of a cattle-byre, so I should say.”
The footsteps sounded near and hurried now, but still there was that delicate, lady-like treading across what Priscilla had named the sweet yard-litter. David and the girl, looking from the shadows of the mistal into the open sunlight, saw a well-dressed figure of a man—a man neither short nor tall, neither dark nor fair—a man no way remarkable, unless the sun was full upon him, and, seeing him from a shadowed place, you noted the uncertain eyes which long ago had been a puzzle to his mother when he stood beside her knee.