Her brown eyes held him and he warmed to his tale.
"You've heard all this, maybe?" he hazarded.
She shook her head.
"I knew there was such a family, once, somewhere about these parts," she said, "but I did not know just where——"
"Why, it was just here," he went on slowly, looking around, "here and no other spot, whatever, Mrs. Peddler. Here's what granny called 'Gypsy's Spring,' 'account of their always searching the best water, you see—like yourself. Gypsy Spring in Appleyard Lower Field, she'd tell us, and there was where he met the gypsy and the land changed hands and the name ran out."
"Who met the gypsy?" she asked, her eyes large and mellow on him.
"Who? Why, young John Appleyard, Mrs. Peddler, and married her, and off with them both! They're all for roaming, you see—you know. 'But she'll be back, sooner or later,' my granny used to say: 'Come spring, back she'll be, if not him; for there's two things certain and they won't change, my time or yours,' she said. 'An Appleyard must own a good horse, and a gypsy woman must come back.' But, you see, for once my granny was in the wrong of it, for 'twas a full hundred years ago, what I'm telling ye, and they never came."
A slow, satisfied smile crept over the peddler woman's firm lips. Her eyes rested on the great, browsing bay; her strong sea-browned hand caressed the watchful dog's head; the odour of the may in the hedge filled her nostrils. Life spread before her.
"No, farmer, your granny was right," she said gravely, "gypsy women always come back."