His face was flushed to the eyes. He struggled visibly for expression.
"Yo' moosn' saay I doan' like yo'. Fer it's nat the truth."
"I'm glad it isn't," she said.
He walked with her down the bridle path to the gate. He was dumb after
his apocalypse.
They parted at the gate.
With long, slow, thoughtful strides Greatorex returned along the
bridle path to his house.
* * * * *
Alice went gaily down the hill to Garth. It was the hill of Paradise.
And if she thought of Greatorex and of how she had cajoled him into
singing, and of how through singing she would reclaim him, it was
because Greatorex and his song and his redemption were a small, hardly
significant part of the immense thought of Rowcliffe.
"How pleased he'll be when he knows what I've done!"
And her pure joy had a strain in it that was not so pure. It pleased
her to please Rowcliffe, but it pleased her also that he should
realise her as a woman who could cajole men into doing for her what
they didn't want to do.
* * * * *
"I've got him! I've got him!" she cried as she came, triumphant, into
the dining-room where her father and her sisters still sat round the
table. "No, thanks. I've had tea."
"Where did you get it?" the Vicar asked with his customary suspicion.
"At Upthorne. Jim Greatorex gave it me."
The Vicar was appeased. He thought nothing of it that Greatorex should
have given his daughter tea. Greatorex was part of the parish.