Mrs. Yellam sighed.
"We be on the skirts o' great happenings. If 'tis the Lard's Will, I have nothing to say."
CHAPTER IV
LE PAYS DU TENDRE
During the month that followed, Fancy was very happy. Time stands still for true lovers. Past and future seem immensely remote; the present, with its rosy hours, holds captive the happy prisoners. Alfred, it is true, had not yet put his fate to more than the touch. He had encircled a slender waist with a reassuringly strong arm—no more. Being a Yellam and a carrier, he disdained haste. Fancy was well content to stroll arm in crook towards the altar. Indeed, upon more than one occasion she had checked Alfred when about to explode into speech. Behind this procrastination lay a maiden's quickening sense of the passion she had provoked. Men whom she regarded as "devils" had accused her of being prim and cold. She happened to be neither, but it delighted her to think that she inspired restraint in her lover, that he treated her with a delicacy less rare in big strong men than is generally supposed. His dry humour appealed to her, and the rude Doric of this remote Wiltshire village brought many a smile to lips that grew redder as kissing-time drew near. As yet Alfred had not kissed her, although he had kissed the others many times. She gleaned this information from her fellow-maids, who were very sympathetic and, apparently, more impatient for a satisfactory consummation than the protagonists themselves.
Meanwhile, Alfred was learning how to drive a motor, and becoming acquainted, very slowly but surely, with the "insides" of the great beast. Already he regarded it as human, and of the same sex as Fancy. He would say:
"She was ramping and roaring yesterday afternoon and spitting black smoke at me. But when I coax her, she purrs sweet as any pussy-cat."
Lively chaff was exchanged between the lovers upon fortunes told by real ladies, which turned out wrong. Fancy, however, still pinned her faith to an old pack of cards in her possession, and to appease her Alfred began to speak of himself as a soldier. When Fancy confided this to Molly, she said maliciously: "Soldier, eh? Well, he ain't one o' the 'onward' sort, is he?" Fancy divined that Alfred would speak when the motor-'bus was delivered; and there were moments when she asked herself anxiously which of the two "hers" he loved the better.
Toward the end of July, her mind was set at rest upon this point. After the first walk to the downs, Alfred discovered that Fancy tired easily, although her alert little mind remained active and indefatigable. His own brains moved slowly; frequently he was unable to follow the maid's divagations and speculations. For example, he had asked her soberly what she intended to mean by the expression a "poor soul," an expression used by him in an entirely different sense.
"You came nigh upsetting Mother," he told her. "Dang me, if she didn't think 'twas a biff at her."