VII.
Latter that day Cæsar came in from the mill with the startling intelligence that Philip was riding up on the highroad.
“Goodness mercy!” cried Nancy, and she fled away to wash her face. Grannie with a turn of the hand settled her cap, and smoothed her grey hair under it. Kate herself had disappeared like a flash of light; but as Philip dismounted at the gate, looking taller, and older, and paler, and more serious, but raising his cap from his fair head and smiling a smile like sunshine, she was coming leisurely out of the porch with a bewitching hat over her wavy black hair and a hand-basket over her arm.
Then there was a little start of surprise and recognition, a short catch of quick breath and nervous salutations.
“I'm going round to the nests,” she said. “I suppose you'll step in to see mother.”
“Time enough for that,” said Philip. “May I help you with the eggs first? Besides, I've something to tell you.”
“Is it that you're 'admitted?'” said Kate.
“That's nothing,” said Philip. “Only the A B C, you know. Getting ready to begin, so to speak.”
They walked round to the stackyard, and he tied up his horse and gave it hay. Then, while they poked about for eggs on hands and knees among the straw, under the stacks and between the bushes, she said she hoped he would have success, and he answered that success was more than a hope to him now—it was a sort of superstition. She did not understand this, but looked up at him from all fours with brightening eyes, and said, “What a glorious thing it is to be a man!”
“Is it?” said Philip. “And yet I remember somebody who said she wasn't sorry to be a girl.”