‘We’ll have a rare drying wind to-day.’
Then she, in a modified way, would go through the same pantomime and answer pleasantly; ‘Yes, I think you will.’
And he would pass on, leaving that great ‘something’ he wanted to say still unspoken. Yet Caleb was reputed to be a man possessed of a special gift of speech. He showed no lack of it in the presence of any one save Pansy.
‘I wonder what gars him come round this way ilka mornin’ and night,’ said Sam Culver one day to his daughter, looking at her suspiciously. ‘He’d be far sooner hame if he gaed round by the wood, like other folk.’
‘I cannot tell, father,’ she answered, her gypsy cheeks aglow: ‘maybe he has to go up to the House for something.’
Sam shook his head thoughtfully: he did not relish the idea which had entered it.
‘Kersey is a decent enough lad; but he is wildish in his notions of things, and a’ the farmers round about are feared to trust him with ony work. That’s no the right way to get through the world, my lass, and I wouldna like to see you with sic a man.’
Pansy was a little startled by this plain way of suggesting why Caleb chose to take the longest route to his work; and she proceeded hurriedly to clear away the breakfast dishes. That evening, Caleb did not see her as he passed the cottage.
Whatever Sam Culver’s opinion of Caleb Kersey might have been, it underwent considerable modification, if not an entire change, as he watched him work and the harvest rapidly drawing to a close under his care. At anyrate, one evening, as Caleb was exchanging that stereotyped greeting with Pansy, and was about to pass on, her father came up and asked him in to supper.
‘It’s just a plate o’ porridge and milk, you ken; but you’re welcome, if yer not ower proud to sup it. Mony’s the great man has sought naething better.’