“Don’t they? Then they ought to, and they’d learn a lot that they don’t know now. I’ve met men, laboring men who can’t read or write, and it’s wonderful the things they know about the land and the way plants grow on it, and the live things that are only seen at night, or stealing to their homes at daybreak. And there’s a new wheat, a wheat I was reading about yesterday, Cobbett’s corn, it is called, that I am sure would do about here if anyone would try it. But there,” remembering himself and to whom he was talking, “this can have no interest for you. Only wouldn’t you rather plod home weary at night, feeling that you had done something, and with all this”—he waved his hand—“sinking to rest about you, and the horses going down to water, and the cattle lowing to be let into the byres, and—and all that,” growing confused, as he felt her eyes upon him, “than get up from a set of ledgers with your head aching and your eyes muddled with figures?”
“I’m afraid I have not tried either,” she said. But she smiled. She found him new, his notions unlike those of the people about her, and certainly unlike those of a common farmer. She did not comprehend all his half-expressed thoughts, but not for that was she the less resolved to remember them, and to think of them at her leisure. For the present here was the mill, and they must part. At the mill the field-path which they were following fell into a lane, which on the right rose steeply to the road, on the left crossed a cart-bridge, shaken perpetually by the roar and wet with the spray of the great mill-wheel. Thence it wound upwards, rough and stony, to the back premises of Garth.
He, too, knew that this division of the ways meant parting, and humility clothed him. “Heavens, what a fool I’ve been,” he said, blushing, as he met her eyes. “What must you think of me, prating about myself when I ought to have been thinking only of you and asking your pardon.”
“For nearly shooting me?”
“Yes—and thank God, thank God,” with emotion, “that it was not worse.”
“I do.”
“I ought never to carry a gun again!”
“I won’t exact that penalty.” She looked at him very kindly.
“And you will forgive me? You will do your best to forgive me?”
“I will do my best, if you will not carry off my basket,” she replied, for he was turning away with the basket on his arm. “Thank you,” as he restored it, and in his embarrassment nearly dropped his gun. “Good-bye.”