“Looking for sheep would seem to be my trade in life from cradle-time,” she said. Her voice was grimly playful, lest the tragic note should sound too clearly and beat down the reserve she cherished. “Ay, I’ve been all my life looking for sheep and not finding ’em, Reuben Gaunt. A man’s love, and bairns, and profit from farming lean, intaken land—I’ve sought ’em all in my time, and found ’em go bo-peeping like the ewes I’m following now. Life’s like that, till ye’ve done with it—and maybe then we’ll find no softer bed to lie on.”
“You’re cheery, Mrs. Mathewson,” put in Reuben drily. “Nice neighbour-body to fall in with, when a man’s spirits are running high.”
“Oh, I’ve done with cheeriness—done with overmuch grief, too, by that token. Sometimes, when I look at ye, Reuben Gaunt, a touch of the old fire comes to me, and I long to throttle ye, stark where ye stand. Then I laugh to myself, knowing I’d fail at the job, somehow, though I brought all the will in the world to it. Peggy will have to thole her misery, as I did mine at her age; and, by that token, I’m keeping ye from riding out to see her.”
Gaunt knew at last the hidden motive for his journey. He had not confessed it to himself; but this woman, with the hard, clear eyes and clear, hard insight into life, had found the truth for him.
“I’m riding in the contrary direction, as it chances,” he said.
“Ah, that proves the matter. There’s other birds like ye, prettyish and small of build, that fly zig-zag to their nests.”
Gaunt was nettled in earnest now. “As you want a plain tale, you shall have it,” he said quietly. “I’m going to marry John Hirst’s daughter.”
Widow Mathewson knew no surprises nowadays; she had outlived them. “Guessed as much yesternight,” she said, speaking only half the truth for once, like Reuben himself. Yet it was only the name of her daughter’s rival that she had lacked. “Peggy went to bed with tears in her een, and in the middle of the night she wakened me with her sobbing in the next-door room. Queer that such as ye can keep such as Peggy wetting blankets with her tears; but I did the same in my time for as poor a dandy-tuft of a man as ye.”
“We are good friends, seemingly,” said Gaunt impatiently.
“Ay, close as bee and flower, Reuben Gaunt. Ride down to Peggy—she’s throng with churning—and tell her the same lies that I hearkened to when I was ripe and young. God plants the like garden for all women, I take it, with the like apples in it; and, whether the man be half a man or a tenth part, ’tis all one. Reuben Gaunt,” she broke off, with the passion she had denied not long ago, “why did ye keep your saddle just now when I frightened that horse of yours? There’s a sharp rock on either hand of ye, and two or three in front; whichever way your horse had thrown ye, ye’d not have lighted soft—and it might have been on your head.”