“Who cooks for ye?”
“Who sweeps for ye?”
“Who sews yer buttons on?”
“Who knits yer stockings?”
“I do for myself, my dears, and my thoughts be my company.”
He looked round very contented, and I could see he was thankful that
none of all these women had a right to come over his door-sill.
“Well, thank you for me, Missus,” he said, putting down his mug and
plate. “And now for work. The loom’s in the attic, I suppose?”
“Ah, I’ll show you. There’s a bed there too. You wunna finish for two
days or three. There’s a plenty for you to do. But come down and get
your supper along with us, for it inna every day we have a randy.”
By the time she came back every tongue was at it. Sukey and Moll were
quarrelling as to which of them, if they could do as they willed and go
and work for him, should pour his supper ale and fill his pipe. It was
enough to make an owl laugh.
“A nice young fellow,” says Missis Sexton, “and a God-fearing, I’ll lay,
if the women let un alone.”
She looked very meaningly at Felena.
But Felena was fallen into a muse.
“I like him better than Gideon, a power, though Gideon _be_ your
brother, Prue,” says Tivvy.
Missis Miller spoke for the first time.
“He’s as different,” she said, “as different as mortal man could be,
from the Miller!”
It was the greatest praise she could give.
Polly gave a loud whoop, as if to say that she agreed.
“Well, time goes by, and even a toothache must be cured some day,” said
Missis Beguildy. “So we’d best set to at the caking afore my maister
comes back. Thank you kindly for the spinning. We’ve done enough to keep
that young man busy for above a bit.”
She brought out a big willow-pattern dish stacked with cakes, saffron
and sponge-fingers and gingerbread babies. These last are little men of
gingerbread, with currants for eyes.
Sukey and Moll screamed with joy to see them.
“I dunna care about the others, if so be I can win a gingerbread man!”
says Sukey.
“I’ll win six,” says Moll. “Six curranty babies for me!”
“You’ll need more gumption than you’ve got then,” says Missis Sexton,
“For there’s no game so hard as the game of Costly Colours. I’ve played
it at every randy since I was a maid, and I’ll lay that your Ma has too,
and Missis Sarn and Missis Miller. Yet it’s a difficult game to us
still. And for you that have played it seldom or never, it’ll go hard,
but you’ll lose every cake.”
“Tell ’em the way of it,” says Missis Beguildy, “you’ve got such a
head.”
Though she meant it in good sadness, it made me laugh. For indeed Missis
Sexton’s head was marvellous to see, with oiled hair in rolls and bobs
and bands, and a high comb, and ribbons, and a vasty cap on top of all.
She went across the kitchen like a coach and six, and stood by the fire,
telling us about the game of Costly Colours—how you counted, and of the
trumps, and how three of a suit was a _prial_, and four of a suit was
_Costly_, and how you could _mog_, or change, your cards, and of the
deuces and Jacks, and “Two for his heels,” and how if you made nought of
your hand it was called a cock’s nest, and you were bound to give a cake
all round.
“I canna mind a word!” says poor Tivvy.
“Nor me,” says Polly.
So they stood out and left us ten, and it was only eight we wanted for
two tables. So I offered to stand out.
“Why, you be the best player of all,” says Jancis. And the mother of
Sukey and Moll settled it, saying—
“Stand out, girls. You can play turn-the-trencher with Polly and Tivvy.
But no noise!”
They burst out crying, wanting to win the cakes. But their mother said
did they want more slipper, so they hushed. Then she bought them each a
gingerbread man, and promised them some more at the end.
Felena drew at the same table with me. That is to say, it was the
pig-killing bench with a board and a white cloth on it, for they had but
one table.
“There’s not one of us women but ud like a gingerbread man, is there,
Prue Sarn?” she says. “So, us being too old for cakes, shall us
make-believe to be playing for the soul of the weaver?”
“As you please,” I says. “But it seems to me to be none of our
business.”
“Why, Prue Sarn, you’re as white as a shroud one minute, and as red as a
peony the next, and such burning eyes! What ails you?”
I was angry, yet there was a warmship in this one thing, that she seemed
to be counting me as one like herself, and not as one that was set aside
from the game of love. I suppose, being under suspicion of dancing with
the devil, she had a fellow-feeling with me for being mixed up with
tales of witchcraft. For they’d even begun to say of me that I took
shape as a hare on dark moonless nights, and went loping across the
hills, and had a muse running under the churchyard. Such things were
first said in idleness or mischief or to scare children, and then, in
the loneliness of old farms, full of creakings and meanings on windy
nights, they grew. And none can tell what such things will grow into at
long last, nor what harm they may do. I didna like it much when Felena
took his name on her lips, for all on a sudden it was a precious name to
me. And it seemed to me then, as it ever has, that he was not a man to
speak of lightly. Watching him out of my darkness beyond the settle, I
had thought his wrath would be like a cloud-burst, though his smile was
a spring day full of warm gillyflowers.
Felena drew me farther from the rest.
“A man,” she said, “whose like I’ve not seen afore, neither on the roads
nor at market. The others are gaubies to him. Did you see the colour of
his eyes?”
“No.”
“Nor could I see. His eyelids cut across them so straight, and the
candle of his eye is so big and black, you canna see the colour. I’d
lief be nigh him, to see.”
Her glass-green eyes misted, and a rich, swooning look came over her.
“A man to gamble for,” she said.
“Take your places! Take your places! Cut for first deal in the game of
Costly Colours!” cries Missis Sexton.
As I sat down I twisted the words of Felena in my mind, and said in the
deeps of myself—
“Not a man to gamble for. A man to die for.”
We gave our minds to the game, and the four girls having been sent into
the yard, the room was as silent as a dream.