The traction engine, belonging to a stone quarry, passed two or three times a week, and was never—the country being hilly—so full that it could not accommodate a passenger.
It was therefore arranged that Edward should go and see the driver, and afterwards see Hazel, and arrange for her to go to town also. He was to stay at home. Mrs. Marston would never leave the house, as she said, 'without breath in it,' though she could give no reason for this idea, and prided herself on having no superstitions. She would not trust Martha by herself; so Edward was ruefully obliged to undertake the office of 'breathing', like a living bellows to blow away harm.
It was settled that they were to go on the day before the flower-show, and Hazel was to stay the night. It would be the last night but one before the wedding.
Meanwhile, the bark-stripping continued, and fate went on leading Jack Reddin's horse in every direction but the right one. Edward went to Hunter's Spinney every day. He began to find a new world among the budding hyacinths on the soft leafy soil, breaking up on every side with the push of eager lives coming through, and full of those elusive, stimulating scents that only spring knows.
* * * * *
When the day came for going to Silverton, and Hazel arrived fresh and rosy from her early walk, he felt very rebellious. Still, it was ordained that someone must breathe, and only his mother could choose the clothes.
It took Mrs. Marston several hours to get ready, and Edward and Martha were kept busy running up and down. Not that Mrs. Marston's clothes had to be hunted for or mended—far from it. But there were so many cupboards to be locked, their keys hidden in drawers, the keys of which, in their turn, went into more cupboards. When such an inextricable tangle as no burglar could tackle had been woven, Mrs. Marston always wanted something out of the first cupboard, and all had to be done over again. But at last she was achieved. Edward and Martha stood back and surveyed her with pride, and looked to Hazel for admiration of their work; but Hazel was too young and too happy to see either the pathos or the humour of old ladies.
She danced down the steep path with an armful of wraps, at the idea of wearing which she had made faces.
The path led steeply in a zigzag down one side of the quarry cliff, where Abel had told Hazel of the cow falling, and where she had felt drodsome. Once more as she came down with a more and more lagging step, the same horror came over her.
'I'm frit!' she cried; 'canna we be quick?'