“Now, Simon! And they say your tongue is rough as an old file. For my part, I allus knew ye could be kind and easy, if ye’d a mind to.”
“I war a bit of a devil once, may be,” he admitted, with a slow, pleasant laugh, as if he praised himself unduly for past escapades. “Ay, a bit of a devil, Martha. I’ll own to it. But rheumatiz has taught me sense since them days.”
“Sense is as you take it, Simon. Ye might shoot wider o’ the mark than to peep at a lass’s een, just whiles, like.”
Simon Foster, feeling that their talk grew warmer than mere pleasantry demanded, glanced away from the topic. “I saw summat on my way down fro’ the moor,” he said, dry and matter-of-fact once more. “There’s no accounting for it, but I saw it with my two eyes, and I’m puzzled. You wouldn’t call me less than sober, Martha?”
“No,” she put in dryly. “Sobriety was allus a little bit of a failing wi’ ye, Simon. There’s times to be sober, I allus did say—and times to be playful, as the kitten said to the tabby-cat.”
“Well, I happened to look into th’ sky, just as I’d getten past Timothy Wantless’s barn, and I saw summat,” went on Simon stolidly.
“So ye went star-gazing? Shame on ye! Only lads i’ their courting time go star-gazing.”
“Maybe. But it was daylight, as it happened, and I wasn’t thinking o’ courtship—not just then,” he added guardedly. “I war thinking of an old mare I meant to sell Timothy Wantless to-morn for twice as much as she’s worth. She wasn’t fit to carry one o’ Sir Jasper’s men, and she’ll ruin him i’ corn afore he comes back fro’ Lunnon, and it stands to reason she mun be sold for what she’ll fetch. And I war scratching my head, like, wondering how I’d get round Timothy—he’s stiff and snappy at a bargain—when I happened to look up—and there war men on horseback, fair i’ th’ middle o’ the sky, riding all as it might have been a hunting day.”
“Good sakes! I’ll go skerry to my bed, Simon.”
“It war queer, I own; and, if they’d been on safe ground, I’d have run in to see what ’twas all about; but, seeing they were up above, I watched ’em a while, and then I left ’em to it.”