“Oh, I’ll manage Ned if you’ll manage father. ’Tis worth tryin’. Dear to be sure, how happy we mid be all livin’ together!”
“Father ’ull be fit to kill us all if he do find out.”
“He won’t find out. He can’t be vexed wi’ you anyhow. Ye need only say that I’ve a-told ye so, an’ axed ye to speak to en for I.”
“Well, that’s true. There, my dear, I’d be simply out o’ my wits wi’ joy. I’ve missed ye—there, I can’t tell ye how much I’ve missed ye.”
They clung together, half laughing, half weeping, and the remainder of Alice’s visit was spent in the congenial task of building castles in the air.
Farmer Bolt was rather taciturn at dinner-time, and his wife deemed it more prudent to postpone operations till a more favourable moment. In the evening, however, when milking was done, and tea over, and Mr Bolt drew up his chair to the fire and filled his pipe, he himself gave her the opportunity for which she had been hoping.
“Ye had Alice wi’ ye to-day?”
“Ees, she told me she’d passed ye in the Drove—how did ye think she was lookin’?”
The farmer smoked for a moment or two with a gloomy expression.