A STRANGE fate awaited this renewal of passion. Over the border in
Wales, where many dark and violent things are born, a sultry flame had
been kindled about this time in the heart of a Wesleyan local preacher
named Evan Hughes. He was a Montgomery peasant, a carpenter by trade, on
whom, brooding over the historical sanctity of his calling, an
inspiration had fallen. He preached in the chapel Bethesda, in the
hamlet Llandewi Waterdine. He spoke in the dialect of his
fellow-workmen; his words were ludicrous and pathetic; but the fire that
scorched his heart was in them, so that men and women rode over the
mountains on their ponies to hear him and many professed themselves
converted. Why, or to what they were converted it would be hard to say,
unless it were that the isolation of their lives laid them open to long
broodings on sin and on salvation, and that knowing, as all men know,
that they were sinful, they could not be happy in solitude till they were
saved.
The unconverted said maliciously that Evan Hughes had been shocked into
sanctity by proceedings of affiliation and a maintenance order. However
this may have been, his preaching was on chastity of the body, and more
particularly of the bodies of women, a doctrine that was acceptable, for
the most obvious reasons, to married men with wives younger than
themselves, and on sentimental grounds to young unmarried girls. The
flame spread quickly through these green shoots, and the dry, withered
twigs went up with a crackle. Women of sixty years and older stood up on
the chapel floor and prayed God to grant them continence. Evan Hughes,
with a singular lack of humour, hailed them as souls plucked from hell
and greeted them as sisters. Thus, having cleansed the Kerry Hills and
the borders of Clun, he set his eyes, like any spiritual freebooter, on
the English border, cursing the fatness and laxness of the Teme valley so
violently and with such free quotations from the prophet Jeremiah, that
the local circuit invited him to conduct a revival from their pulpits.
First he came to Chapel Green, and naturally enough converted old Mrs
Malpas, who was always on the side of the angels. She sat under him with
tears streaming from her eyes for the sins of her friends, and afterward
had the honour of putting him up at the Buffalo in spite of his
prejudices against the licensed trade. On this, the first Sunday of the
revival, the Chapel Green Methodists achieved the authentic shiver, and
the vicar of Mainstone, who had heard all about it, made a reconnaissance
of his parish, shaking his head and warning his people against the
influence of unhealthy fanatics.
‘It’s a crime,’ he said, ‘putting such ideas into young people’s minds.
We don’t want that sort of thing in the country. Mainstone is a clean
parish. Apart from that unfortunate young Mrs Malpas at Wolfpits there
is scarcely an . . . unsavoury household in it.’
In spite of this official discouragement, Evan Hughes increased. The
revival, unlike those epidemics of disease which afflict the body, spread
steadily eastward. Chapel Green with its sober, bucolic population, had
made the mildest of beginnings. At Mainstone half the vicar’s
congregation thronged the chapel. People walked over from Lesswardine on
the Sunday evening in little laughing groups and returned in silence with
a Roman segregation of the sexes. Those who scoffed had such a bad time
of it that they held their tongues.
Among the victims of this collective exaltation was Susie Hind. No doubt
the violence of her renewed passion for Abner had thrown her into an
emotional state. Abner was now absorbed in it, and content to be
absorbed, seeing that in this way he purchased forgetfulness; but Susie
had to run the risk of discovery or worse until her nerves were all on
edge.
At first Abner could not make out what was the matter with her. One
Sunday night she cried and cried in his arms and would not tell him why.
For the rest of the week she brooded on the extremity of her sin; then,
with the same queer directness that had driven her to confront Mary
Malpas some time before, she sought an interview with the evangelist and
laid her confession before him. He turned away from her.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘I cannot hear these things. My ears are full
of them. “_Go and sin no more_!” and remember me when you pray.’
She went home burning but humiliated, and gave herself up to an ecstasy
of self-abasement in prayer. When the men joked with her in the bar at
night she would not listen to them. Next Sunday she went again to the
chapel and wept. She knew that after dark that night Abner would come
and call her. She loved him, but it seemed to her that her immortal soul
was more precious than mortal love, and here were two souls to be saved.
She lay stiff in bed waiting for his signal, compelling herself to be
cold. A clod struck the window-pane. She clasped her hands in an
attitude of prayer and lay like a stone. Again he signalled to her. She
dared not lie there any longer for fear he should become impatient and
waken her father. She slipped on some clothes and came to the door.
‘I can’t see you, Abner,’ she whispered hurriedly. ‘I can’t let you in.
I can’t . . . don’t ask me.’
He thought she had taken leave of her senses. ‘What the devil’s up with
you?’ he said.
She shook her head and would have closed the door on him, but he put his
foot in it. ‘Don’t!’ she said. ‘Oh, don’t!’
He had no intention of being put off like this. He tried to kiss her,
but she kept him at arm’s length, and when he had done his best with
persuasions and still could get no sense from her, he became angry and
raised his voice. Now genuine fear was added to her other emotions, and
in order that he should not awaken her father she consented at last to
follow him out into the lane. He was on the point of agreeing when it
flashed into his mind that this was only a ruse to get him away from the
door so that she might lock it in his face.
The only explanation that suggested itself to him was that she might be
expecting another lover. ‘No, you don’t my girl!’ he said. ‘You’ll come
along with me.’
He waited for her, and in another moment they had crossed the road under
the shadow of the poplar. From that point she could see the roof of the
cottage where the evangelist was staying. The gable rose up high like a
symbol of the power she was obeying. ‘Not here,’ she whispered. ‘We
might be seen.’ He helped her over the gate, taking her down in his
arms. She stiffened beneath his touch. A heavy dew had come out on the
grass that washed her ankles as she walked, for she had not pulled on her
stockings. Owls were hunting in the misty starlight. One floated before
them along the hedgerow—ghostly on quiet wings. He caught her up in his
arms.
‘Now what’s it all about?’ he said.
She hurried to tell him before it grew more difficult, stammering with
haste; but when she came to the story of her conversion and her interview
with Evan Hughes she felt the weight of his ridicule overbearing her.
She hadn’t humbled herself enough to bear the indignity of being laughed
at, and least of all by Abner. She stopped suddenly.
‘Let me go back!’ she said, trying to free herself. ‘Let me go back!’
He only held her closer.
‘What’s all this havering?’ he said. ‘What’s up with you, eh? Give us a
kiss!’
She put her hands up to his mouth, struggling. ‘I can’t . . . I can’t!’
‘What do you want then?’
She took her plunge. ‘Abner, why don’t you marry me?’ she said.
‘Marry you? Marry?’ he cried. He laughed out loud at the idea.
Then it came to him in a flash that there must be some urgent reason for
her request. People in his class and in that part of the country rarely
married unless they were obliged to in accordance with the local custom.
He had been caught in the same way as nine out of ten of his married
mates. It was like his cursed luck! He wouldn’t believe it. His first
feeling was one of bitter rage. He saw himself tied hand and foot,
helplessly handed over to the commonest of fates, another fool caught in
the web that women spun for a free man’s undoing. He saw in front of him
an endless dull routine of life at Mainstone. He saw himself finished,
and the idea of paternity gave no consolation to his bitterness. Then,
in the same swift vision, he saw the little household at Wolfpits that
depended on him for support, and among them the wan, devoted face of Mary
Malpas.
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ he said at last. ‘How do you know
you’re like that?’
She flushed in the dark, with an involuntary affectation of modesty.
‘How dare you?’ she cried. ‘How dare you? I’m not. There’s nothing
wrong with me.’
‘Then what the hell is all this talk of marrying about?’ he cried. ‘What
d’you take me for? I’m not that soft?’
He laughed out loud in the suddenness of his relief. It stung her pride
to think that he was laughing at her. Anger boiled up in her, and she
forgot all her pietistic resolves as she freed herself in abuse. In a
single second the penitent had been turned into a virago mad with
jealousy, letting fly at him a spate of foul words that she had learned
in the taproom. She didn’t stop to think what she was saying. The words
swept over her mind in a flood and made her deaf. Then she saw Abner
shaking with laughter at her performance and pulled herself together.
‘I’ve finished with you, you great beast!’ she said. ‘A dirty chap that
goes running all over the country after women! I’m not going to take
turn and turn about with a married woman, so don’t you think it! You and
that great stick of a Condover as George Malpas got sick and tired of in
three year . . . you and your Mary!’
‘Here, drop that?’ said Abner darkly. ‘Shut your mouth!’
‘Drop it?’ she cried. ‘You’re not going to shut my mouth when the whole
village is disgusted with you and your goings on . . . and her putting on
a face as innocent as a saint and taking the children out for walks, poor
little devils! You wait till George comes back and then she’ll show you
the back door quick enough. I don’t know what you want taking up with a
piece of muck like that. You’re a dirty hypocrite, and as for her . . .’
Abner stopped her mouth, but she fought and struggled.
‘Next time you’d better go farther off than Redlake,’ she spluttered.
‘You dirty, rotten swine!’
It was lucky for her that she wrenched herself away from him, for Abner’s
blood was in his head. She went running like a madwoman over the ghostly
field. If she had stayed he could have murdered her. Slowly following,
he came to himself, and wondered what the devil he was doing in that damp
field in the middle of the night. He cursed all women as he saw them in
her violent image, but when he set his feet on the high road, his anger
had subsided and he began to realise how blind he had been. He knew that
Susie had probably spoken no less than the truth about the local
scandals. Looking backward he found that he could explain the smiles and
winks and sidelong glances of his mates. Fine friends they were, who
made sport of a man and never told him why! And it dawned on him, still
stupidly incredulous, that this trouble and nothing else was the cause of
the change in Mary’s behaviour, the thing that had snatched her so
violently away from him. No doubt it had come to her ears through Mrs
Mamble. All women were spiteful by nature, and could not resist the
pleasant temptation of giving pain to others of their kind. They had let
her know in some covert way what folk were saying, and she, too proud to
confide in him, was protecting herself as best she could. He knew her
pride . . . he wished to God she were not so proud, and yet, since that
was her nature, he must be patient with her.
He was not built for patience. Walking home to Wolfpits with the high
road beneath him, and the mild humming of telegraph wires that stretched
away to the ends of the earth above, he felt once more the restlessness
with which his spirit was so familiar: the desire that had come over him
in fierce gusts from time to time ever since the days of his childhood,
the will to be free, to cut all coils and launch out into the life to
which he had a right. Ever since his boyhood he had been as much a
prisoner as George Malpas, and for even less reason. Breaking free from
Mawne and reaching out over these hills, he had merely passed from one
prison to another. The only periods of freedom he had known had been
those dimly-remembered days with his father before Alice came to
Hackett’s Cottages, and the week of his travels on the road with Mick
Connor. Always, somehow or other, a woman had been at the bottom of his
slavery. Women were the curse of his existence. It pleased him fiercely
to think that in his breach with Susie he had shorn through one of these
shackles. He hated women, and yet, in his heart, he could not remember
Mary without tenderness, and knew that, however loudly he might protest,
he was going back along the road to Wolfpits of his own free will, and
whatever it might cost him, must stay there until George Malpas returned.
That night he was too late to see Mary; but next morning, when he arrived
at the work, he tackled Munn on the subject of the Redlake scandal.
‘What do they say about me and Mrs Malpas, Joe?’ he asked.
Munn stammered. ‘Nowt as I know, Ab,’ he said.
‘Drop that, kid! Don’t you come that over me!’ he said. ‘Spit it out!’
‘Naught out of the way,’ Munn said at last. ‘They say as you and her is
pretty thick.’
‘Oh, they do, do they?’ said Abner. ‘And what do you think about it,
eh?’
‘It’s none of my business,’ said Munn doggedly.
‘No more it is, my son,’ Abner laughed. ‘Get on with it!’
‘They said you’d been caught out over at Redlake.’
‘Then it’s that bleeder Badger!’ said Abner. ‘Wait till I see the sod!
That all?’
‘I didn’t hear no more,’ said Munn.
‘Well, kid,’ said Abner. ‘You keep clear of the women! Don’t you have
naught to do with them!’
‘No fear,’ said Munn, with a smirk of his hare-lip.
Abner had meant to have the matter out with Mary, but when he thought it
over he saw that nothing was to be gained by this. He understood her
awkwardness, and, knowing the delicacy of her temper, left well alone.
She, on her part, would have suffered an agony of shame in showing him
George’s letter. After his final interview with Susie she noticed a
change in him and wondered what had caused it. He began to spend his
evenings again at Wolfpits, going out to talk in the stables with old
Drew, picking baskets of fruit from the walled garden and working, more
rarely, in their own tilled plot. She was curious to know what had
happened, but kept her thoughts to herself, and was grateful at least for
his forbearance.
She had heard no more of George, and though she had lived in fear of
seeing old Mrs Malpas ever since Susie’s visit had told her that the new
scandal was abroad, the weeks passed by and no outside intelligence
penetrated the remoteness of Wolfpits. At times, when she saw Abner
moving quietly about the heavy work of the house she was overwhelmed with
a sensation which she persuaded herself was gratitude, and longed to
burst through the convention of silence or commonplace that bound them.
It would have been fairer, she thought, to open her heart to him, to
stand face to face without a veil between. But she did not know what her
own heart contained, or what the veil concealed, and her courage always
failed her. Not only would her confession involve an abasement, a
sacrifice of pride that she could not face, but Heaven only knew where it
might lead. And yet, in spite of these things, they were almost happy.
One Wednesday evening early in August, just before the gang knocked off
for the day, the clerk of the works came walking gingerly among the
scattered culverts to the trench in which Abner and Munn were working.
He carried a paper in his hand which he consulted with short-sighted eyes
before he addressed them.
‘Fellows and Munn, isn’t it?’ he mumbled. ‘Munn and Fellows. Yes.’
‘That’s us!’ said Abner, throwing down his shovel.
‘I’ve a letter from the boss,’ said the clerk, ‘orders to cut down the
wage-bill on this job. We’ve got to sack all supernumerary hands—those
that aren’t regular, that is—so we shan’t need you two after Saturday
week. That gives you ten clear days’ warning to look about you.’
‘Right you are, gaffer!’ said Abner.
The clerk went blundering on to another trench, having ticked off two
names on his list.
‘Well, Joe,’ said Abner. ‘What about it, my son?’
‘I dunno, Ab,’ said Munn dolefully. ‘Back to bleedin’ old Brum, I
reckon. That’s about the ticket. I wouldn’t have had this happen not
for a bit! I shall never find another lodge like old Mrs Taylor’s.
She’s been a mother to me, that woman! What are you going to do?’
‘Stay on here, Joe,’ said Abner. ‘Pick up another job somewhere.’
‘That’s right enough for you,’ said Munn. ‘I can’t go farmerin’ an’
all.’
‘Right enough is it?’ Abner laughed. ‘You wait and see!’
The siren sounded, and Connor came along the trench whistling jauntily as
he always did when he was up against it.
‘Got the boot, Mick?’ Abner asked.
Mick nodded. ‘It breaks the heart in me to think I’m afther leavin’ all
them pheasants,’ he said. ‘Off on the touch again: that’s what it’s come
to. Ireland’s the only place to live in, and I’ll knock down enough for
a double at Punchestown if it’s only hawking of dead Roses of Jericho
round the basements of Merrion Square. Shure, an’ you’ll come along wud
me!’
Abner shook his head.
‘God help you, you couldn’t be worse if you was married’ said Mick, with
a leer.
Abner laughed. He knew Mick Connor too well to take his tongue
seriously.
That night when he went home he did not tell Mary what had happened, for
it seemed to him his news would only disturb her needlessly. At the same
time he knew that something must be done, and after tea he went down to
the bridge to wait for old Drew’s return.
The labourer looked at him and scratched his head. ‘That’s the worst of
they casual jobs,’ he said. ‘Money? Yes . . . but you never get knowed,
and there’s nothing permanent to them.’
Abner asked how he should set about finding a job in the district, and
the old man looked solemn.
‘I rackon you’ll find it easy enough for a month or maybe six week with
the harvest coming. They be glad of any help they can get in they times.
After that you can whistle for it.’
‘Anything ‘ll do for me,’ said Abner.
‘Now mark ’ee, ’tis like this,’ the old man explained, ‘this country,
when fust I know’d ’en, were a tarrable place for barley and wheat, but
now, like the vules they be, they’ve a’ given it up and gone in for this
dairyin’. Proper women’s work, I call it; and women be cheap in these
parts, as they ought to be. I don’t say as there ban’t the apples as
well.’
Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof. Abner knew now that he
could not look beyond the harvest for regular work, but harvest labour,
being rare, was well paid, and by working overtime he might easily amass
a little store of money. More than that, he might even prolong his
employment, if he made good friends, by helping to pick the yellow apples
from which thin Shropshire cider is made, but on this, he knew well, he
could not count with any certainty, as the orchards were alien and few.
He begged old Drew not to mention his quest to any one at Wolfpits, and
the old man blinked his assent.
Next Sunday evening he said good-bye to the friends who shared in his
dismissal. Munn, who had scraped together a little money, was going to
Ludlow, where he would catch a train for Dulston. Mick Connor, being
sick of England, as he said, was tramping north to Holyhead. Abner
walked with him to the crest of hills above Clun.
‘If you’re ever in the city of Dublin,’ Mick said, ‘all you’ve got to do
is to go into Nagle’s Back. Ask for the devil they call Kerry Mick, used
to lodge with Mother Muldoon, and the grocer’s curate ‘ll give you a
naggn’ for the love on him.’
Abner watched him swing away down the hill, with his loose-jointed,
loping stride. He returned home late at night. Mary, contrary to her
custom, was sitting up for him.
She sat at the table reading, and he quickly tumbled to her reason for
doing so. In the midst of his farewells he had forgotten to give her his
week’s wages the night before. She would not ask him for money; but she
was hoping that her unusual presence would make him realise what he had
forgotten. Seeing this he was tempted, for a moment, to withhold it; to
wait and see what she would do, to force her into a spiritual submission;
but then he remembered that the shock which he was being forced to give
her would be quite enough.
‘Here’s the brass,’ he said, placing it on the table in front of her.
‘Thank you, Abner,’ she said.
‘I reckon it’s got to go a long way this week. I’ve kept none back.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘It’s going to be the last, far as I can see.’
For a second she thought that the moment had come; that her coldness had
actually forced him into leaving her. Remorse, mingled with cold fear
for the future, overwhelmed her; but he saw her bewilderment and told her
simply what had happened.
‘I’ve got to look out for work,’ he said. ‘It may come along any day,
only the harvest’s late.’
‘We shall have to manage,’ she said calmly. ‘You can trust me to do the
best I can.’ She stood waiting as if she wanted to say something more,
but at the last her courage failed her. ‘I have a few shillings put by,’
she said. ‘I always thought something might happen.’
‘Well, yo’m a marvel and no mistake!’ he cried.
During his first week of idleness Abner went out every day visiting the
farms of the neighbourhood in search of a promise of harvest work. It
was a lean year: the drought of the summer had stunted the straw; a
couple of violent thunderstorms had done more harm than good, and the
farmers were now hanging on as long as they dared, gambling on the chance
of rain that was due. Wherever Abner went they shook their heads.
‘Can’t say when we’ll be cutting,’ they said. ‘Next week, or week after,
or three weeks’ time. It depends on the weather, and the damned stuff’s
that poor it isn’t worth reaping. Worse than the hay . . . and that’s
saying something!’
At night, when he came home, Mary looked anxiously for his news, but he
could tell her nothing. He made casts farther afield. He did not care
how far he went if only he could find work; but down in the plains,
although he could see for himself that the ears were fuller, he was met
by the same evasive replies. He came to hate the sight of these sour,
prosperous farmers. It seemed to him that they all had the same callous
faces as the distant Mr Cookson who had killed his dog; but he knew
better than to let Spider follow him on these visits.
‘You might try Mr Prosser of The Dyke,’ said old Drew one evening. ‘That
be a fine big farm, and they say he do go in for barley.’
Next day Abner visited The Dyke. It was a farm that he had missed in his
former expeditions, a house buried in beechwoods that stood,
unappropriately, high and dry on a lofty ridge south of the main road
between Mainstone and Lesswardine. It lay five miles from Wolfpits as
the crow flies, and nearly seven by road. A green drive bordered by
hazels and sheltered by smooth beeches in which squirrels were playing,
brought him to the house: a melancholy edifice, built four-square, and
covered with plaster that had once been painted white but was now
streaked with green. He knocked at the back door, but could make nobody
hear. A dog flew out of a kennel near the yard gate, tugging at his
chain, and inside the house two others, excited by the sound, came
pattering along the passage and scraped at the lower edge of the door
with their paws.
Abner gave it up. Evidently nobody was at home. He took a drink of cold
water at the pump and set off home through the green lane. Half-way down
it he heard a sound of muffled hoofs, and a dog-cart, of the sturdy kind
that farmers use, came swinging round the corner. The driver was a woman
of twenty-five to thirty years of age, swarthy, with a rich autumnal
colouring, and gray eyes. Another, younger girl, with her hair in a
pigtail, sat beside her. They passed Abner at a trot, but twenty yards
later the driver pulled up and looked back.
‘Have you been up to The Dyke?’ she called.
‘Yes, miss,’ said Abner, taking off his cap, and approaching.
‘I don’t suppose you’d find any one in,’ she said. ‘Dad’s gone to
Ludlow, and the girl’s out. What do you want?’
‘I came to ask if Mr Prosser wants any outside help for harvest.’
She looked at him steadily. Their eyes met. ‘I don’t know. What’s your
name?’
‘Fellows. Abner Fellows.’
‘Where do you live? You don’t belong to these parts?’
‘Wolfpits.’
‘Wolfpits?’ She examined him more closely, repeating the word with an
accent of surprise. She put a brown-gloved finger to her lip. ‘I think
dad will want some one: they’re beginning the barley on Monday,’ she said
slowly. ‘Tell you what . . . you’d better look up here to-morrow
morning. I’ll tell dad you’re coming. So long!’
She touched up the horse and the dog-cart shot forward. Abner went on
his way encouraged.
‘Where did you try to-day?’ Mary asked him. She was doing her utmost to
appear interested in his quest. Indeed she could not well do less.
‘Up to The Dyke . . . Prosser’s place.’
Mary blushed. ‘Did you see any one there?’
‘The place was all shut up,’ he said, ‘but I met a young lady as I took
to be Mr Prosser’s daughter in the drive just after I turned back.’
‘What age was she?’
‘Summat about yourn.’
‘Dark?’
‘Ah, darkish. There was a young ’un along with her.’
‘How was she dressed?’
‘Now you’m asking things out of reason,’ Abner laughed. ‘Them’s the sort
of things a man don’t notice.’
‘It must have been Marion,’ she said, and later in the evening she
explained to him that Mr Prosser’s elder daughter was an old schoolfellow
of hers, and rather more than a schoolfellow, for they had once been
great friends. Mary’s father, the unfortunate Condover, had been
something of a crank on the subject of education and had sent her to a
school in Ludlow, where she had mixed with all sorts of people who were,
in fact, her social superiors. ‘But that’s all ages ago,’ she said. ‘I
expect that she’s forgotten me by now. Mr Prosser lost his wife five or
six years ago, and Marion’s had charge of the house ever since then. A
great big place, The Dyke! She’s a queer girl, I’ll give you my word for
that.’
Next day Abner went up early to the farm. In the yard he found the
younger of the two girls. She was dressed in a holland overall and a big
straw hat and was watching a hatch of ducklings that an anxious hen had
mothered, learning to swim in an iron bath. When she saw Abner she ran
into the house calling: ‘Marion! Marion!’
The elder came to the door. Abner scarcely recognised her, for she had
changed her tweeds and her sporting hat for an overall like that of her
sister, and her dark hair was bound in thick plaits about her head. She
greeted him frankly, smiling and showing between her parted lips a set of
beautiful teeth.
‘I’ve told dad about you,’ she said. ‘He’s just gone over to have a look
at the bull and ’ll be back in a minute. Have a glass of cider?’
Abner thanked her. She returned brightly with a mug of cider and a plate
of scones hot from the girdle.
Five minutes later Mr Prosser came into the yard with his ploughman
Harris. The farmer was a tall, fair man, with golden whiskers and a
moustache that almost hid the weakness of his mouth.
‘H’m, you’re the young man, are you?’ he said, looking Abner up and down
with more curiosity than he could have been expected to show for a casual
labourer. ‘What is it you want? Eh?’
Abner repeated his request, and the farmer, with a little less than the
usual surliness of his kind, said: ‘Well, yes, I dare say we can do with
you so long as you’re not afraid of work. But it’s a short job, I warn
you!’
The younger girl, who had been listening dreamily to their conversation,
turned and uttered a shrill cry. ‘Dad! Dad!’ she said, ‘I’m afraid I’ve
drowned one of them!’ She ran forward with an inanimate piece of yellow
fluff in her hand. ‘Oh, what a shame!’
‘That’s like you, Ethel,’ the father grumbled. ‘Take it in to Marion.’
But by this time the elder sister had appeared and was holding the
duckling to her breast as though she would have liked to nurse it back to
life. Ethel stood watching her with tears in her eyes.
‘You’ll never make a farmer’s wife, Ethel,’ said Mr Prosser, teasing her.
‘Come here! Give us a kiss!’ He held the child’s face in his hands and
kissed her noisily. Marion had carried the duckling into the house. He
turned to Abner.
‘Day after to-morrow,’ he said. ‘Come up early . . . about five
o’clock.’