IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A WOMAN
For all her woodland timidity, Loveday was prone to those flashes of
temper to which the weak in defence and the strong in feeling seem
peculiarly exposed. She snatched the shielding apron back from the lap
of the buxom Cherry, stamping her foot the while. Cherry, too amazed to
protect her treasure, stared, slack-mouthed.
Primrose flew into a temper that surpassed Loveday's, already failing
her through dismay at her own action, even as the thunder, to children,
surpasses in terrifying quality the lightning.... And, had they but
known it, Primrose's sounding tantrums held as much possibility of
danger, compared with Loveday's rage, as holds the crash compared with
the flash. But they knew it not, and already Loveday stood panting a
little and spent with her own storm, while Primrose gathered herself,
undaunted, for the attack.
A hail of words would have beaten about Loveday's drooping head had not
Cherry, all unwitting, come to the rescue with a cry on the discovery
that her treasures, thus disturbed, had fallen to the ground, which was
muddy enough, owing to the habit of the cattle of trampling the soil
around the stiles.
"Oh, my fairings, my fairings!" cried Cherry, swooping at them from her
height with all the headlong thump of a gannet after its prey. Loveday's
dive was as the gull's for grace contrasted with it. Their hands met;
Loveday divined in an instant, by the tug of Cherry's, that she was
suspected of trying to snatch the fairings, instead of merely restoring
them, and she straightened herself with a return of her sick anger.
Cherry clutched the frail morsels of riband and lace in her lap, then,
seeing there was no danger, began to straighten them out, scolding the
while.
"There, see, Primrose love, that edging is all crumpled ... did you ever
see the like? Never mind, I'll press it out for 'ee, and it'll look as
good as new. And this riband, that's the one I bought off Bendigo, the
pedlar, for Flora Day--oh, my dear life, what'll I do with it now?"
"'Tis a gurt shame, that's what 'tis," said Primrose, resentful both for
her friend's riband and her own edging; "and I'd get my Willie to make
her buy new, only 'tis no good asking paupers for money, because, even
if they was to be sold up, all their sticks and cloam wouldn't fetch
enough for a yard o' this riband."
The vulgar taunt had sting enough to rouse Loveday to a wholesome
contempt that saved her. She stood staring with a genuine scorn at the
little articles of lace and artificial flowers which Cherry's beau had
given her at the last fair. Yes, even at the riband which had been
Cherry's special pride as bought by herself from the pedlar, and it was
one that had taken Loveday's eye with its delicate beauty--for it was of
palest rose, like the shells she picked up on the beach, not a crude red
or blue, such as she saw in the shops at Bugletown when she went in on
market days. Secretly, something in her marvelled that such a riband had
been Cherry's choice, and her scorning of it now was the easier because
she hated to think she and the blowsy damsel could have a taste in
common.
"You and your fal-lals!" she exclaimed; "here's a fine boutigo to make
of a parcel of ribands and laces that'll make you look like a couple of
the puppets at Corpus Fair. If you wear such as those to the Flora
you'll be mistook for a Maypole, and folk'll dance round you."
"Well, folks 'ull never dance even _round_ you, unless you're burnt
as a guy in a bonfire, let alone dancing _with_ you, Loveday
Strick," rejoined Primrose, "and so you do very well knaw, and that's
why your heart's sick against us."
A minute ago, and that had been true; it was for her isolation Loveday
had raged, but when she had seen these two draw their aprons over their
girl's treasures, she had not guessed those possessions aright. What she
had imagined in her girl's heart, knowing Primrose's condition, it is
not for us to pry at; whatever it was, it was so swift, so born of
instinct, as to be holy. But when she saw the crumpled finery, she was
suddenly too much of a child again to rate it worth envy. The things
that Primrose, all unthinking, stood for, the things of warm hearth and
hallowed bed that her house had never known, might have power to draw
the woman out in her all too soon, but the things that merely charm the
feminine still left her chill.
She laughed, all the sting gone, when she saw what a milliner's paradise
it was from which she was kept out, and put her foot on the first step
of the stile.
"By your lave, Cherry Cotton!" she said, and swung lightly over,
balancing her jar, while they still stared at the change in her.