“You can write a dommed good letter, Prue.”
“They were Gideon’s letters.”
“I take it very kind in Sarn to tell me to change my stockings when they
be wet. It inna often you find a man as thinks of such things, and Sarn
least of all, I’d have said.”
He let me have the full light of his eyes, and I hung my head and found
nothing to answer.
“And the sewing work, and the damson cheese and the pickle at half
market price, well, I tell you, it fairly bowled me over, for I’d heard
Sarn was a hard man, very near in a bargain, asking nothing and giving
nothing. And then for him to offer me those victuals! I must have
misjudged the chap cruel.”
But by this I’d remembered that the stockings were in the letter I wrote
for Jancis after she ran away. So I said, it was Jancis mentioned
stockings.
“Oh, yes, so it was!” he says. “I liked that letter. A very nice girl,
that. For whoever wrote the letter, she made it up, of course!”
He looked at me again, and I found nought to say.
“‘I be more choice of him I love than of all else in the world beside!’
That’s a woman worth summat to a fellow,” he went on. “And, ‘I love him
past telling, and shall to the end.’ And in especial that about, ‘spend
my life any time very willing, and die for you by bite of dog or any
way, my dear.’ I liked that. But when I come to think of it, ’twas Sarn
said that to Jancis Beguildy. What a lover the man must be. You must be
main fond of him, Prue Sarn.”
“Oh, yes,” I said, all in a flush, “I be.”
“Indeed yes, and only what you should be. Good feeling he has too, about
the choice of texts, and Jancis the same. For that text, ‘The Maister be
come,’ was in the letter Jancis wrote to me, as well as in the one Sarn
wrote to Jancis.”
“Only natural,” I said.
“I’m coming to Sarn’s love-carriage, and I’ll be bound to thank him for
his kind thoughts about the sewing and the damson cheese and the
pickle,” he said.
“Oh, dunna!” I cried out, knowing how angry Gideon would be.
“There’s a grudging girl,” he says, “not wanting her brother to be
thanked.”
He had a look of satisfaction on his face, as if he’d found out what he
wanted to know.
“Well, it’s no use ifting and anding any more,” he says. “You wrote the
letters, and you made ’em up. And all I can say is, the chap you were
thinking of when you said the things you did say is a lucky chap,
whoever he is.”
“I hanna got an acquaintance.”
“Dear me! That’s pity, to my mind. But anyway, you’ve got a friend. You
write in your book, when you go back, that Kester Woodseaves is your
friend till Time stops.”
I thanked him very kindly for that, and then he said, should we go and
look for some more dragon-flies coming out of their shrouds? So we did,
and had a tidy bit of talk, one way or another, about this and that. We
watched the dragon-flies take off from the tops of the rushes, and we
saw the water simmering in its troubling, and the lilies looking at
their angels.
But it was a long time before I remembered to say, how did he know about
my book that I wrote in? For it seemed I couldna remember anything very
well when he was by.
“Well,” he says, “maybe a bird told me. Or an old ancient woman like a
little bird.”
“But how did you get to know all the other things you do seem to know
about me?”
“Well,” he said, “there’s a tuthree people know you, Prue. And there’s
few know you and dunna love you. And I expect I’ve been leasing in their
hearts a bit. And I think there’s not much that I dunna know about you,
Prue.”
There was rest in that saying. And oh, the summer in his voice, then and
always! I forgot the time and all. Yes, indeed to goodness, I forgot
milking time! But when I saw the light of evening long upon the mere,
and heard the evening breezes lifting up the leaves in the forest, I
turned to go. Then he said—
“There’s a thing I’m bound to ask you.”
He stood looking straight into my eyes, for we were almost of a height,
though he was a little the taller.
“What for did you do all you did for me that day at the baiting?” he
said. “What for did you stand above me with the knife, and run to
Lullingford and all, to save me?”
There was a deep silence, with only the lifting of the summer boughs,
the lapping of the quiet water. How was I to answer? Yet he would have
an answer, I could see.
Then I thought, seeing the lilies looking at their angels, how I’d
called myself Kester’s angel at the baiting.
“Why, it was only that I was your angel for that day,” I said at long
last. “A poor daggly angel too.”
“If you’re ever wanting an angel’s situation, you can send to me for a
written character,” he said, and though his words were merry, his eyes
were as grave as grave could be. And then, as we said good night and I
turned home, he called out after me—“Not so daggly, neither!”
And I could hear him laughing in the wood.