"You'd like to come to the Barton, wouldn't you, my maid?" said Pendoggat in a wheedling tone.

"Iss," murmured Thomasine at last. She didn't dare say anything else.

She was afraid he would strike her if she struggled. She was staring without much expression at the little dwarfed oaks, and the blood was working vigorously up and down her exposed neck and bosom as though a pump was forcing it. She had a thought just then; or, if not quite a thought, a wish. She wished she had taken a situation which had been offered her at Sourton, and had never come to Town Rising. She felt somehow it might have been better for her if she had gone to Sourton.

She might have escaped something, though she hardly knew what. She could not have got into a town, as she was too ignorant and dull for anything better than a moorland Barton.

"You've done with young Pugsley?" Pendoggat muttered.

He pulled her hair down roughly, hurting her. Thomasine had good brown hair in abundance. He wanted to see it lying on her skin. Anything to add fuel to the fire!

"Iss, sir."

"That's well. If you and he are seen together there'll be h.e.l.l," he cried savagely. "You're mine, blood and flesh, and all that's in you, and I'll have you or die for it, and I'd kill the man who tried to get you away from me, as I'd kill you if you played me false and ran off to any one else. You young devil, you--you're as full of blood as a whort is full of juice."

While speaking he was half dragging her towards the ruined miner's cot, and there flung her savagely on the fern.

Much lower down, where the Tavy fretted less, being freer from rocks; where there were trees, and a shelter from the wind, and flowers also in their season, honeysuckles and rose-bays, with fern in great abundance--there could be no fairyland without ferns--and green water oozing from the banks, and a fragrant kind of mist over it all; there, where the river slanted perceptibly towards the lowland, "more down under like," as Peter would have expressed it, two little people were trying to strangle one another with pure affection. They were not pixy-folk. They were only Boodles and her boy going on with the story.

They would have been out of place upon the high Tavy, on the rock-strewn side of the cleave, among the ruins of the mines. There was nothing hard or fierce about them. They were children, to be treated with tenderness; kept out of the strong wind; put among the flowers where they could roll and tumble without hurting themselves; wrapped in the clinging mist full of that odour of sweet water and fresh foliage which cannot quickly be forgotten when it has been enjoyed.

"I thought I was not going to see you any more," said Boodles with a fine indifference.

"Should you have cared very much, sweetheart?"

"Not a bit, really. A girl mustn't expect too much from a sailor boy.

They are fickle, and keep a sweetheart at every place they stop at.

Girls at every port. Red, white, and yellow girls. A whole heap of them!"

"But only one all the time," said Aubrey. "One best beautiful girl who makes all the others seem nothing, and that's always the girl he leaves at home and comes back to. You were always in my thoughts, darling."

"But you never wrote," murmured she.

"I promised mother I wouldn't," he said, with a little hesitation.

"Then she does know," cried Boodles quickly. "Well, I think she ought to, because we can't go on being so chummy--"

"Lovers," he amended.

"No, we can't," she said decidedly. "Your people must know all about it, and like me, and tell me I'm nice enough, if we are going on in the same old way. You see, boy, I had got used to the idea of doing without you, and I don't want to start again, and then your people to say I'm not nice enough. We are growing up now. I'm in long frocks, and--and at our age things begin to get serious," went on the seventeen-year-old girl of the radiant head somewhat dolefully, as if she was rather afraid she was past her prime.

"I'm going to take you to see mother. I promised her I would," said Aubrey. "Before going away I told her I was awfully in love with you, and she made me promise not to write, but to see what my feelings were when I came back. And now I've come back, and I love you more than ever, because I love you in a different way. I was only a boy then, and now I am a man, and it is as a man that I love you, and that sweet golden head and your lovely golden face; and if my people behave properly, I shall get a ring, and put it on this little finger--"

"You silly boy. That's my right hand," she laughed.

"Then there will be only two more years to wait."

"I shall be only a baby," sighed Boodles.

"Darling, you will be as old as I am now; and I'm nineteen," said Aubrey, with all the dignity and a.s.surance of such longevity.

"Fancy such a child with an engagement-ring! It would be absurd!" said Boodles.

"I shan't be well off, darling," he said, making the confession with a boy's usual awkwardness.

"Then I won't have you," she declared. "I must have a boy with heaps of money, who will give me all the luxuries I have been used to. You know we live very expensively at Lewside. We have a joint of meat every week, and father has two eggs for breakfast, and I have two new frocks every year--I get the stuff and make them myself. If I had a hungry boy to keep, I should want a lot of housekeeping money, though I can make a penny do the work of three halfpence."

"Dear Boodles!"

"Does that 'dear' mean expensive? Well, I am. Some of the stuff for my frocks costs I don't know how much a yard, and it's no use trying to be pretty to a draper, for you can't smile them down a single penny."

"You are very silly, darling. As if I should let you make your own frocks!"

"You are much sillier. So silly that you are hardly fit to live. Telling me you won't be well off! I think if it was all over between us now I shouldn't care a bit."

They came out upon an open s.p.a.ce beside the river. It was clear of trees, and the sun was able to shine upon the girl's head, so Aubrey stopped and took off her hat with reverent hands. She looked up with a pretty smile. He drew her close and they kissed fondly. It was a clean healthy kiss, with less folly in it than most, as sweet as the water, and fresh as the mist; the sort of kiss that makes the soul bud and bring forth blossoms. They had changed a good deal since those days when they had first entered fairyland. There was womanhood in Boodles, and a good deal of the man in Aubrey. They felt the change. It added responsibility, as well as pleasure, to that kiss. In much the same way their appearance had altered. Boodles was rather thinner; she had not quite the same soft, dumpling-like, school-girl cheeks. Aubrey had still the girl's face, but it had become a little hardened and had lost its down. Training and discipline had added self-reliance and determination to his character. They were a pretty pair, little housewife Boodles and her healthy boy. It was a pity they were transgressing the great unwritten law of respectability by loving one another.

"The hair hasn't altered much," murmured the radiant child.

"Only to become more lovely. It is a deeper gold now, sweetheart--real gold; and before it was trying to be gold but couldn't quite manage it."

"This face is just the same to me, except for the nutmeg-graters on the chin and lips. You have been shaving in a hurry, Aubrey."

"You know why. I had to come and meet some one."

"I think you are such a nice boy, Aubrey," faltered Boodles.

Her eyes were so soft just then that he could not say anything. He took the glowing head and placed it on his shoulder, and warmed his lips and his heart with the radiant hair. What a life it would have been if they could have gone on "happy ever after," just as they were then. The first stage of love is so much the best, just as the bud is often more beautiful than the flower.

They walked on between the sun and the fragrant mist, having by this time got quite away from the dull, old place called earth. Boodles carried her hat, swinging it by the strings, and placed her other hand naturally on his arm. Aubrey had quite made up his mind by that time about many important matters. He would marry Boodles whatever happened.

He was fond of his parents, but he could not permit them to come between him and his happiness. As there was only one girl in the singularly spa.r.s.ely-populated world a big price must be paid for her. Even nineteen can be determined upon matters of the heart.

"You know Mr. Weevil is not my father," she said timidly, hardly knowing why she thought it necessary to make the admission; and then, rather hurriedly, "I am only his adopted daughter."

She had to say that. She did not want him to have unpleasant thoughts concerning her origin. She wanted to be perfectly honest, and yet at the same time she dreaded his learning the truth about herself. She did not realise how ill-suited they were from the ordinary social and respectable point of view, although she wanted to justify her existence and to convince him how unwilling she was to deceive.

"I am coming to see him soon," said Aubrey at once. He did not give the matter a serious thought either. He was much too young to bother his head about such things, and besides, he supposed that his sweetheart was the daughter of some relation or connection of Weevil's, and that she had been left an orphan in her childhood, and had been adopted as a duty, not as an act of charity, by the eccentric old man. He had very kindly thoughts of Weevil, because he knew that Boodles had been well taken care of, and always worshipped in a devout and proper manner by the tenant of Lewside Cottage.

"I have told him all about you," the girl went on. "I am sure he thinks you quite a suitable person to take perpetual charge of his little maid, only he is funny when I talk to him about you. It must be because he doesn't like the idea of getting rid of me."

Aubrey supposed that was reasonable enough. He judged Weevil by his own feelings. The idea of losing Boodles would have made him feel "funny"

too.

"It does seem selfish and ungrateful," the child went on. "To be brought up and petted, and given everything by a dear old man, and then one day to run off with a nice young boy. It's very fickle. I must try and feel ashamed of myself. Still I'm not so wicked as you. If you would leave me alone I should abide with him always--but then you won't! You come and put selfish thoughts into my head. I think you are rather a bad boy, Aubrey."

The young sailor would not admit that. He declared he was quite a natural creature; and he reminded Boodles that if she hadn't been so delightful he would not have fallen in love with her. So it was her own fault after all. She said she was very sorry, but she couldn't help it.

She too had only behaved naturally. She was not responsible for so much glowing hair and golden skin. Others had done that for her. And that brought her back to the starting-point, and she felt vaguely there was something she ought to say about those unknown persons, only she didn't know what. So she said nothing at all, and they went on wandering beside the river where it was wooded and pleasant, and thought only of the present, and themselves, and how very nice it was to be together; until a jarring note was struck by that disagreeable thing called Nature, who never changes her mood, but works seven long days of spitefulness every week.

Aubrey had brought his dog with him, and the little beast had put aside his social instincts in that glorious hunting-ground, and had gone to seek his own pleasures, leaving his master to the enjoyment of his. Just then he returned, somewhat sheepishly, as if afraid he ought to expect a beating, and slunk along at Aubrey's heels. Boodles at once set up a lamentable cry: "Oh, Aubrey! he's got a bun, a poor little halfpenny bun!"