"I'll have the start, anyway," said Peter, affectedly covering his tremors. He did not relish the idea of being second labourer to a girl who already had made him nervous.
The old man laughed in the unending way of people who enjoy one joke a day, but enjoy it well.
"You'll not get the start o' Bess," he said at last. "She's milked this half-hour, and she'll a' dug taters for a week 'fore we're sweated."
They left the house and worked silently through the first half of the morning. Peter was silent, preoccupied with his strange terror of meeting the farmer's granddaughter. Yet, as they rested at noon, he was disappointed that she had not come. He had not found content in his labour.
Then, suddenly, he saw her coming over the field with a tray. At once he felt a panic to run or to disappear. He could feel his flesh burning beneath the sweat of his morning's work. He could not look directly at the girl, but in swift glances he embraced the swing and poise of her advance.
For a miserable moment Peter stood between his terror of the girl and his instinct to run and relieve her of the heavy tray. He felt himself—it seemed after hours of indecision that he did so—spring to his feet. He met her ten yards from the spot where they had sheltered under the hedge.
"Let me," he said, taking the tray into his hands. He did not look at her, but knew she was smiling at his strange, polite way.
"The young gentleman's in a mighty hurry to know you, Bess," said the farmer, amused at Peter's incredibly gallant behaviour.
"He's a young gentleman, to be sure," said the girl in the low, even note which again stirred Peter to the bone. He felt her eyes surveying him, and in an agony of resolution looked her in the face.
He could only endure for a moment her steady, impudent gaze. Her lazy smile accented the challenge of her eyes. Peter was conscious only of her sex, and she knew it at their first meeting. In every look and motion of her face and body was provocation. Her appeal was not always conscious, but it was never silent. Peter saw now what had moved him as she stood in the light of the window the evening before with mischief in her eyes. Even then, though she had no thought of a lover, it was woman's mischief. He saw it now fronting him in the sun. He could hardly endure to meet it, yet it was vital and sweet.