“I’m all right, but I don’t want to go to-day. I should only make muddles.”
“We don’t make muddles,” he said fiercely.
“Let me be. I can’t harness.”
“Well, then Oi’ll do it, dearie. You just set there—Oi’ll put the door a bit ajar and once you’re in the fresh air you’ll be all right.”
She heard him shuffle back into the living-room and thence into the kitchen as the shortest way to the stable, and then, almost immediately, she became aware of a little noise at the garden-gate. She was sitting opposite the clock, and through the slit at the doorway she beheld, to her amaze, a red-headed figure outside the gate, sitting on a box and mopping its brow as it gazed sentimentally at the cottage. Even in the wild leaping of her pulses, the grotesqueness of their both sitting gloomily on boxes—so near and yet so far—tickled her sense of humour. But as she sat on, smiling and fluttering, she saw him rise, cast a cautious look round, open the gate, and steal towards the living-room. In a bound she was within and waiting by the closed casement, and as his expected peep came, the lattice flew back in his face and her hysteric mockery rang out.
“I thought you’d never look on my face again!”
It was almost a greater surprise than when she had appeared with Methusalem walking the waters, for he had counted her just as surely set out on her Friday round as the sun itself, and his sentimental journey safe from misunderstanding (or was it understanding?).
“Oh, don’t cackle!” he snarled. “I might have guessed you’d try to catch me.”
She gulped down the sobs that were trying to strangle her speech. How glad she was that she had on her best frock! “I overslept myself!” she said gaily. “Gran’fer’s harnessing. I see you’ve brought your box! You’re just in time!”
“I haven’t brought my box!” he snapped.