“Why that, now? Why that? I’m well content to reap what I sow.”
“But not if it’s the bane, Gideon? Not if it’s the precious bane as I
read about in the book of the Vicar lent me? You dunna want _that_ amid
the corn, lad, what grows in hell?”
“_Whatever_ it is,” he says, “if I sow it and it brings me the things
I’d lief have, I’ll welcome it.”
There came a little sobbing sound from Jancis, and when I looked at her
I saw beyond her golden head the spring day all o’ercast and the
thorn-tree lashing in a sudden wind.
“You’d best be going home-along, my dear,” I says. “There’s tempest
brewing.”
“I shall come on Sunday, and tell your dad what I think on him,” said
Gideon.
“No, no, dunna anger him!”
“What do I care for his anger?”
“Oh!” she cried out, “everything’s all as I wouldna have it. Why canna
folk live quiet and peaceful? Why must you be so fixed in your mind,
Sarn? Hark at the wind rising! There’s summat foreboded.”
She began to cry again, hiding her face in her apron.
“O, I wanted to send out the biddings and be shouted in church,” she
said, just as she used to say, “O, I wanted to play _Green Gravel_.”
Gideon snatched her to himself and kissed her, but he didna change his
mind. Once he’d made it up, nothing ever would turn him.
“I mun go,” she said. “Come and send me, Sarn.”