Eve hesitated.
"P'r'aps you'm thinkin' Adam 'ud blame 'ee for it?"
"Oh dear, no, I'm not: I'm not quite such a slave to Adam's opinion as that. Besides," she added, feeling she was speaking, with undue asperity, "surely everybody may go for a walk without being blamed by anybody for it: at all events, I mean to go."
"That's right," said Jerrem.—"Here, I say, Joan, me and Eve's goin' out for a little."
"Goin' out? Where to?" said Joan, coming forward toward the door, to which he had advanced.
"Oh, round about for a bit—by Chapel Rock and out that ways."
"Well, if you goes with her, mind you comes back with her. D'ee hear, now?—Don't 'ee trust un out o' yer sight, Eve, my dear—not further than you can see un, nor so far if you can help it."
"You mind yer own business," said Jerrem.
"If you was to do that you'd stay at home, then," said Joan, dropping her voice; "but that's you all over, tryin' to put your finger into somebody's else's pie.—I doubt whether 'twill over-please Adam either," she added, coming back from watching them down the street; "but, there! if he and Eve's to sail in one boat, the sooner he learns 'twon't always be his turn to handle the tiller the better."
* * * * *