'So this is your home?'
'Ah!'
Edward found her more disturbing to-night than at the concert; the gulf between them was more obvious; she had been comparatively tidy before. Now her disreputableness contrasted strongly with his correct black coat and general air of civilized well-being.
Hazel came nearer.
'He inna bad to live along of,' she confided, with a nod towards the cottage. 'O' course, he's crossways time and again, and a devil's temper.'
'You mustn't speak of your father like that, Hazel.'
'What for not? He be like that.'
'Are all these apple-trees yours?' he asked to change the subject.
'No, they'm father's. But I get the windfa'ls and the bruised 'uns. I allus see'—she smiled winningly—'as there's plenty of them. Foxy likes 'em. He found me at it once bruising of 'em. God a'mighty! what a hiding he give me!'
Edward felt depressed. He could not harmonize Hazel's personality with his mother's; he was shocked at her expressions; he was sufficiently fastidious to recoil from dirt; the thought of Abel as a father-in-law was little short of appalling. Yet, in spite of all these things, he had felt such elation, such spring rapture when Hazel danced; the world took on such strange new colours when she looked at him that he knew he must love her for ever. He felt that as his emotions grew stronger—and they were becoming more and more like a herd of young calves out at grass—his ways of expression must increase in correctness.