“Ah! your husband’s woods ’ud not be in sich good order as they do be if it wasn’t for I an’ sich as I,” returned the man. “I do cut down a piece reg’lar every year, an’ then the young growth comes, d’ye see, twice so thick as before, so that the game can find so much shelter as they do like.”
“And what are you going to do with all these poor little trees?” inquired Betty. “They are too green for firewood, aren’t they?”
“Well,” said Dick, with his infectious smile, “I make hurdles wi’ ’em for one thing, an’ some of ’em goes for pea-sticks, an’ others is made into besoms. They mid be green,” he added reflectively, “but folks do come here often enough a-pickin’ up scroff for burnin’.”
Here the child on Betty’s arm began to whimper, and she nodded to it and dandled it, her own person keeping up a swaying, dancing movement the while.
Dick Tuffin watched her, at first with a smile; but presently his face clouded.
“You have a better time of it, Mrs. Whittle,” said he, “nor my poor little ’ooman at home. You do see your husband so often as you like; but there, I must bide away from home for weeks and months at a time. I mid almost say I haven’t got a home; and Mary, she mid say she haven’t got a husband.”
“How’s that?” inquired Betty, pausing, with the now laughing child suspended in mid-air, to turn her astonished face upon him.
“My place is nigh upon fifteen mile away from here. I go travellin’ the country round, cuttin’ the woods and makin’ hurdles; an’ ’tis too far to get back except for a little spell now and then. I didn’t think o’ wedlock when I took up the work, an’ now I d’ ’low I wouldn’t care to turn to any other. But ’tis hard on the ’ooman.”
“She oughtn’t to let you do it!” cried the keeper’s wife firmly. “Ha’ done, Jim; ha’ done, thou naughty boy! I’ll throw thee over the trees in a minute!”
The child had clutched at her golden locks, pulling one strand loose; she caught at the chubby hand, made believe to slap it, and then kissed the little pink palm half a dozen times.