What a splendid big kitchen it was, with its raftered ceiling from which depended huge hams and flitches, and vari-coloured bunches of herbs. A great fire burned briskly at one end, a long table set with blue and white china stretched down the middle, with heavy wooden chairs about it. Snowy curtains fluttered at the small-paned windows, and a row of geraniums bloomed on each sill. Rose and Ruth thought they had never seen so inviting a room.
So there they sat, toasting their feet before the blaze, while they watched the spit that held a great roasting goose turn slowly round and round. John asked many slow questions concerning the Doones, but of Lorna he spoke no word.
“We love Lorna,” Ruth said of a sudden. “Don’t you love her, John?”
He looked at her startled.
“Why yes, I think I do. Who could help loving such a maid?” he replied. “But ’tis long since I saw her, and then only for a few minutes ... among primroses.” He smiled more shyly than seemed possible for so stout and huge a youth, who looked as though he were already a fit match for most men.
“Lorna has sent you a letter,” whispered Rose, drawing it from her pocket cautiously, for she felt that none but John should know of it.
“Lorna—a letter!” The boy flushed scarlet, and took the folded sheet as though he feared to hurt it in his great hands. “Why, the sweet maiden! What said she?”
“That she liked you—and hoped some time to see you once more,” Rose told him. “And I think—I seem to know somehow——” but here her faint memory failed her. She could not remember what happened to John and Lorna. But she knew she liked them both.
John tucked the letter carefully away in his coat unread. And it was a gay supper they all sat down to, when his mother called them to the table. Tom had some good stories to tell, adventures on long rides where he had met some who would have been as glad not to meet him. But it was plain to be seen that he harmed them not at all. They gave their money over without any fuss, as soon as he expressed a wish for it.
“Which is all the better for me,” laughed Tom. “For I would not kill any man, no, nor harm any, either. But how shall I refuse to take the fat purses they are so kind as to lay in my hands?”