"Good morning, Miss Godden."
"Fine weather."
"Fine weather."
He would have passed on, but she barred the way, rather an imposing figure in her bottle-green driving coat, with a fur toque pressed down over the flying chestnut of her hair. Her cheeks were not so much coloured as stained deep with the sun and wind of Walland Marsh, and though it was November, a mass of little freckles smudged and scattered over her skin. It had not occurred to him before that she was even a good-looking creature.
"I'm thinking, Mr. Trevor," she said deliberately, "that you and me aren't liking each other as much as we should ought."
"Really, Miss Godden. I don't see why you need say that."
"Well, we don't like each other, do we? Leastways, you don't like me. Now"—lifting a large, well-shaped hand—"you needn't gainsay me, for I know what you think. You think I was middling rude to Mr. Pratt in Pedlinge street that day I first met you—and so I think myself, and I'm sorry, and Mr. Pratt knows it. He came around two weeks back to ask about Milly Pump, my chicken-gal, getting confirmed, and I told him I liked him and his ways so much that he could confirm the lot, gals and men—even old Stuppeny who says he's been done already, but I say it don't matter, since he's so old that it's sure to have worn off by this time."
Martin stared at her with his mouth open.
"So I say as I've done proper by Mr. Pratt," she continued, her voice rising to a husky flurry, "for I'll have to give 'em all a day off to get confirmed in, and that'll be a tedious affair for me. However, I don't grudge it, if it'll make things up between us—between you and me, I'm meaning."
"But, I—I—that is, you've made a mistake—your behaviour to Mr. Pratt is no concern of mine."