“Oh yes, there are,” said Jinny. “Look! And a bottle of brandy too!”
“You dear!” he began, but Jinny cut him short with warning signals. The sudden revelation of their relations might undo all the good of the spree, by reviving her grandfather’s apprehensions of desertion. Indeed, when the hurly-burly was over, he could scarcely fail to ask himself what this sportive intimacy of the young couple portended, especially as he had even in the past suspected the answer. The truth must be broken to him cautiously, and with that reflection came the chilling remembrance that all this hubbub and laughter had solved nothing, that the situation, though superficially eased, was essentially the same as before, that the problem had only been postponed. Putting Will in a box was not keeping him in England. He would probably have to sail just the same, and the pain of parting be borne afresh, and even if he remained, she could not abandon her grandfather. But she shook off these thoughts. Enough for the moment that Will was hers again.
“Oi’ve never laughed so much since Oi seen that Andraa at Che’msford Fair the day Oi fust met Annie!” said her grandfather, wiping his eyes, as she set off on her delayed round, with Will at her side, and Caleb and the box in the cart, and Nip bounding like mad along the muddy road.
But it was impossible to keep Caleb in mind. Will was too impatient and too famished a lover for that, and it is not often that you sit at your sweetheart’s side when you ought to be whirling towards the Antipodes. Caleb could not help seeing happy backs, circumplicated—in the more solitary roads—by arms, and the hope, first implanted by Martha, that he would be relieved of Will after all, and in so desirable a fashion, grew more and more assured, though the occasional rigidity of the bodies under observation unsettled him afresh.
“Aren’t you late for the coach?” he heard Bundock’s voice inquire at one of these prim intervals.
“No, too early!” laughed Will.
“But you’re going the wrong way!”
“The first time I’ve gone right!” said Will, and with magnificent indiscretion he turned and kissed Jinny.
“Oh dear!” Jinny gasped, red as fire. “It’ll be all over Chipstone by to-night.”
“I wanted the banns proclaimed as soon as possible,” he said, unabashed.