“We be to wish ye j’y, be we?” said Lizzie, with a scarcely perceptible toss of her head.
“I d’ ’low ye be,” he affirmed gravely.
“Well, I be pure glad, Hannah, my dear, I’m sure,” said Alice, smiling doubtfully at Hannah as she backed through the hedge.
Hannah made no response; she, too, was looking doubtful, almost piteous, as she gazed at Giles’ unmoved countenance.
The company filed away, feeling somewhat flat; the joke had unaccountably missed fire. Jem, who was the last to pass through the gap, made a final attempt to put Giles out of countenance.
“’Tis easy seen you be a man o’ taste, Giles,” he called out. “She be the vittiest maid in the whole o’ Darset, bain’t she?”
“She be,” assented Giles with fervour, “jist about.”
He strode towards the hedge, and stood watching the somewhat depressed-looking little procession which filed across the field. When it had disappeared behind the big hayrick at the corner, he turned to Hannah. She had again thrown her apron over her head, and was weeping behind it. He went towards her and pulled it down—very gently this time.
“We have the best of it, I think,” he observed.
“Oh, Giles,” sobbed she. “You must think—oh, I don’t know what you must think!”