‘But I will take notice of it,’ cried Richard. ‘I don’t choose that people should take liberties with my name; and what is worse—with hers. I need not assure you, Uncle Isaac, that I have never said one word to Mrs. Fiander that anyone need find fault with.’
‘To be sure,’ agreed Isaac, ‘of course not.’ He came to a sudden pause, however, and cast a sidelong look at his nephew, scratching his jaw meditatively. ‘There was one day—one Sunday—Sam’el Cross was a-sayin’, somebody seed you both standin’ a-lookin’ over a gate, and Mrs. F. was a-cryin’. That was n’t very likely, I don’t think. ’T was n’t very likely as you’d say aught as ’ud make Mrs. F. cry.’
Richard drew a quick breath, and his hands involuntarily clenched themselves.
‘She did cry one day,’ he said. ‘It was the first Sunday you took me to Littlecomb. She imagined’—hesitatingly—‘that I had a bad opinion of her, and she cried, and said I was unjust.’
‘That’ll be the day you went to see the big mead,’ said Farmer Sharpe reflectively. ‘Ye had n’t made friends then. Ye have n’t made her cry since, Richard, have ’ee?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Women be so fanciful. Ye did n’t really have a bad opinion of her, Richard?’
‘Far from it.’
‘She be a very dear woman—a very dear woman. ’T is n’t very likely as anybody ’ud have a bad opinion of Mrs. F. Well, ye be real trew friends now, and ye don’t need to take no notice of idle talk. Let there be no coolness between ye on that account.’
Richard, however, remained fixed in his determination to avoid Littlecomb for the future, and in spite of his uncle’s protests adhered to his resolution. On the following Sunday he was somewhat discomposed to find Rosalie’s eyes straying towards him once or twice as he knelt on the opposite side of the church, and it seemed to him that they wore a questioning, pleading expression.