"I am glad I have found you."

"You have torn your sleeve!"

"In the briars--see my thumb."

"Aphrodite has p.r.i.c.ked her hand instead of her foot this time," said Felix. "We shall see a new flower in the spring. Let me bind it up?"

and he wrapped May's handkerchief round it. Then Geoffrey and Valentine came, apart and yet together.

"I think it is time to return home," said May, guessing at once from the expression of their faces and Margaret's manner that something was wrong.

"Yes, I think so too," said Margaret. "We have plenty of nuts."

The joy of the day was over; so easily can a few jarring words cloud the loveliest sky and darken the sweetest landscape. They left the wood and returned to Greene Ferne. As they approached the house a labouring man advanced and spoke to Margaret.

"Be this yourn, miss?" he said, and offered her the lost earring. "I found un on the Down by the Cave, as you and measter here," (looking at Geoffrey), "thuck night--"

"Wait a moment," said Margaret, in confusion, for the night adventure had been carefully kept secret from all but Mrs Estcourt. "I will come to you in a moment."

Valentine heard the man's words, and noted his reference to Geoffrey.

Instantly his jealousy was aroused--here was something secret. What had they to do with the Cave at night? Nor was Margaret's halting explanation, that she had dropped it while riding, satisfactory to him.

Altogether the situation was constrained. Both Valentine and Geoffrey stayed at the house as late as they could purposely, but neither found an opportunity of speaking alone with Margaret. When they left Greene Ferne the two old friends at once took different roads.

Valentine, walking through the village, ascended a slight hill, and overtook an old woman of the working cla.s.s, who was groaning and mumbling to herself, and bent almost double under a large bundle of gleanings on her shoulder, and a heavy basket in her hand. As he came up, he good-naturedly took the basket to relieve her, and accommodated his pace to hers.

"You seem to have a heavy load," he said. In the dusk the old hag either did not recognise him, or perhaps did not care if she did.

"I ain't got half a bundle," she grunted. "Thaay won't let a pore old body glean when a-can't rip."

"Well, it's beautiful weather for the harvest."

"Aw, eez--the het [heat] makes um giddy: our ould Bill fell down; the gearden be a-spoiling for rain."

"The farmers pay good wages now, don't they?"

"Um pays what um be obliged to."

"You have a good landlord here--Squire Thorpe."

"_He_! Drotted ould skinvlint! You go and look at thaay cottages: thaay be his'n. The rain comes drough the thatch, and he won't mend it.

I be forced to put a umberella auver my bed nights when it rains."

"At all events, the farmers like him."

"Do um? Never heard say zo. His rabbits yeats their crops like a flock of sheep."

"The vicar--Mr Basil--is kind to the poor, is he not?" asked Valentine, forgetting for the moment his own ill-temper in the old woman's bitterness and abuse of everybody and everything. He was most surprised at her venomous spite against the squire, who he knew was of a kindly disposition. She perfectly hissed at the mention of the vicar.

"Our paason! ould varmint--a gives all the coals and blankets at Christmas to thaay as goes to church, and narn to thaay as be chapel-volk. What have he done with the widders' money, I wants to knaw?"

"What money was that?"

"Why, that as was left to us widders of this yer parish for ever: you med see it stuck up in the chancel. I never seed none of it, nor anybody else as ever I heard tell on."

"But you get wine and luxuries, no doubt, when ill?"

"A vine lot: it bean't for such as we."

"You seem to have some industrious people in the village, however: now, that little grocer's shop where they sell--"

"You means Betsy Warren, what sells tobacco and snuff and lollipops and whipcord. Her buys hares and birds from the poachers--her will get notice to quit zum o' these yer days."

"But the blacksmith works hard. I always hear his hammer when I go by."

"What--_he_! The justices fined he a pound a bit ago for fighting Mathew the cobbler. Mathew lives with Thompson's wife--he as was transported for firing Farmer Ruck's rick-barken. That be a vine thing--her be as bad as he."

"The new school will set you to rights."

"Aw, will a'? The schoolmaster kissed one of the wenches, and got sent away; but them Timothy wenches bean't no better than um should be."

"Who's Timothy?"

"Doan't you knaw ould Timothy? He be a mower--a' will drink dree gallons a day. That young Sam'l lodges with he: he be a shepherd, a' be a new chap. I doan't knaw much about he, but I've hearn as a' had six weeks for stealing lambs."

"H'm!" said Valentine, smiling. "They all seem a bad lot."

"Zo um be."

"But surely Mrs Estcourt is good to the poor: you don't know anything against her?"

"Aw, doan't I? What be her daughter up to? What wur her a-doing on the Down thuck night with thuck gurt lanky chap from the squire's as goes arter her? Mebbe you knaws un."

"When was it?" asked Valentine, with sudden interest, all his annoyance and bitterness returning. "What do you mean?"

"Miss Margaret--a vine miss she be; zo grand. Lord, I minds when farmers' daughters was Molly and Marjory, and no vine Miss about it.

That ould Jane, the housekeeper at Fisher's--warn you knaws her?--her tould zum on um, and zum on um told Mathew, as tould Betsy, as tould I."

"Told what?" sharply.

"What I ses, to be zure. Miss and he wur out thegither a-main bit thuck night. 'Tain't no use caddling I--I can't tell ee no more. What, bean't you going to carry that basket no furder?"

For as they reached the top of the hill, Valentine, angry now, handed it back to her; she barely took it, and made no sign of thanks.

"Mebbe you'll give I a bit of snuff?" she said. He gave her a shilling and strode on swiftly, full of furious thoughts, the more so because all these innuendoes afforded nothing by which an open quarrel could be fixed on Geoffrey.

"This is intolerable," he said to himself, "that he should make Margaret a common talk among these people. What on earth did the old woman allude to, and how came that earring lost?"

It was a pity that the Down adventure had been kept secret; and yet it was natural enough that it should be. The old woman, as Valentine walked rapidly on in the dusk, put the shilling in her pocket, readjusted her burden, and tottered on, muttering to herself, "The gurt chattering fool to come a' hindering I!"