Reddin was bent on getting back to more satisfactory topics.

'They're just two, like us,' he said.

'Ah! We're like under a tent,' she answered, looking at the arching sky.

'Only there's nobody looking at us.'

'How do you know?' she whispered, looking up gravely. 'I'm thinking there _be_ somebody somewhere out t'other side of that there blue, and looking through like us through this here flower. And if so be he likes he can tear it right open, and get at us.'

Reddin looked round almost apprehensively. Then, as the best way of putting a stop to superstition, he caught her to him and kissed her again.

'That's what tents are for, and what you're for,' he said. But he felt a chill in the place, and Hazel had frightened herself so much that she could not be lured from her aloofness.

'I mun go home-along,' she said; 'the sun's undering.'

'Will you come to Hunter's Spinney on Sunday?'

'Why ever?'

'Because I say so.'

'But why so far, whatever?' she asked amazedly.

'Because I want you to.'

'But I mun go to chapel along of Ed'ard, and sing 'ymns proper wi' the folks--and me singing higher nor any of them can go, for all I'm new to it--and the old lady'--her face grew mischievous--'the old lady in a shiny silk gownd as creaks and creaks when she stirs about!'

Reddin lost patience.

'You're to start as soon as they're in church, d'you see?'

'Maybe I 'unna come.'

'You've got to. Look here, Hazel, you like having a lover, don't you?'

'I dunno.'

'Hazel! I'll bring you a present.'

'I dunna want it. What is it?' she said in a breath.

'Something nice. Then you promise to come?'

There was a long silence.

Her eyes seemed to her to be caught by his. She could not look away.

And his eyes said strange, terrific things to her, things for which she had no words, wakening vitality, flattering, commanding, stirring a new curiosity, robbing her of breath.

They stood thus for a long time, as much alone under the flaming sky as a man and woman of the stone age.

When at least he released her eyes, he swung silently into the saddle and was gone.

When he got home, Vessons came shambling to the door.

'Supper and a tot of whisky!' ordered his master.

Vessons took no notice, but eyed the horse.

'You dunna mind how much work you give me at the day's end, do you?' he inquired conversationally.

'Get on with your jobs!'

'Now, what wench'll cry for this night's work?' mused Vessons.

Chapter 23

Hazel ran home through the dew, swift as a hare to her form. Mrs.

Marston, communing with a small wood fire and a large Bible, looked over her spectacles as Hazel came in, and said:

'Draw your stockinged foot along the boards, my dear. Yes, I thought so, damp.'

Hazel changed her stockings by the fire, and felt very cared for and very grand. A fire to change in the parlour! And several pairs of new stockings! She had never had more than one pair before, and those with 'ladders' in them. 'These here be proper stockings,' she said complacently--'these with holes in 'em as Edward bought me. Holes as _ought_ to be there, I mane. They show my legs mother-naked, and they look right nice.'

'Don't say that word, dear.'

'What 'un?'

Mrs. Marston was silent for a moment. 'The sixth from the end,' she said; 'it's not nice for a minister's wife.'

'What mun I say?'

Mrs. Marston was in a difficulty. 'Well,' she said at last, 'Edward should not have given you any cause to say anything.'

Hazel blazed into loyalty.

'I'm sure I'm very much obleeged to Ed'ard,' she said, 'and I like 'em better for showing my legs. Oh, here _be_ Ed'ard! Ed'ard, these be proper stockings, inna they?'

Edward glanced at them, and said indifferently that they were. As he did so, a line that had lately appeared on his forehead became very apparent.

In her room upstairs, papered with buttercups and daisies by Edward himself, and scented by a bunch of roses he had given her, Hazel thought about Hunter's Spinney. Edward would not like her to go, and Edward had been kind--kinder than anyone had ever been. He had extended his kindness to Foxy also. 'I'm sure Foxy's much obleeged,' she thought. 'No, she could never tell Edward about Hunter's Spinney. If he questioned her, she knew that she would lie. He would certainly not be pleased. He might be very angry. Mrs. Marston would not like it at all; she would talk about a minister's wife. Reddin had said she must go, but she must not.' She smelt the roses.

'No,' she said, 'I must ne'er go to the Hunter's Spinney--not till doom breaks!' She said her prayers under the shelter of that resolve, with a supplementary one written out very neatly in gold ink by Edward, who wrote, as his mother said, 'a parchment script.'

But when she lay down she could not keep her mind clear of Reddin; during each meeting with him she had been more perturbed. His personality dragged at hers. Already he was stronger than her fugitive impulses, her wilding reserve. He was like a hand tearing open a triplet of sorrel leaves folded for rain, so strong in their impulse for self-protection that they could only be conquered by destruction.