"I am not going back to Bideabout," answered Mehetabel. "If you cannot take me, I shall go to every farm and offer myself, and if none in Thursley or Witley will have me, I'll beg my bread from door to door, till I do find a house where I may honestly earn it. Go back to the Punch-Bowl I will not."
"I'd like to take you," said Colpus. "Glad to have you. Never a better girl anywhere, of that I am quite certain—only, how about the Broom-Squire? I'm constable, and it must not be said that the constable is keeping a man's wife away from him."
"You will not keep me from him. Nothing in the world will make me go back to him."
"Then—what about the baby? Can you let Bideabout have that?"
Mehetabel flushed almost as red as Colpus and his daughter.
"Never!" she said, firmly.
"But, look here," said the farmer, "if I did agree to take you, why, after a day or two, you'd be homesick, and wantin' to be back in the arms of Jonas. It's always so with women."
"I shall never go back," persisted Mehetabel.
"So you say. But before the week is out you'll be piping another song."
"You may bind me to stay—three months—six—a year,"