She brooded over this for some time, perfecting its details, with little gusts of excitement. There was as yet no very great urgency; she could afford to wait a week or two. Olver, moreover, whom she met one day that Mrs. Quince had sent her on an errand to King’s Avon, informed her that his brother seemed very moody of late and short in the temper, from which she deduced that he was either not seeing Clare or that something had happened to cloud their friendship. The information reassured her, and she cheerfully completed her purchases, passing the time of day with her acquaintances and even accepting a glass of stout at the Waggon of Hay from young Gorwyn, of which she knew that Mrs. Quince would not approve; she looked at young Gorwyn over the rim of her glass as she drank, and wondered whether the day would ever come when she could tell him what she owed him: perhaps on the occasion of some future Scouring, when he and she were left behind among the old folks of the village, to dodder and dither in the sun of the street, perhaps she would tell him then, and a fine astonishment and a good though quavering laugh, he would get out of it. It was funny to look at him now, handsome enough as he lounged beside the bar, and to think of him bent double over a stick; funny, too, to think of what had been between them and of what it was perhaps to lead to. One never knew how things were going to turn out.... She set down her glass on the counter, thanked him, and gathered up her parcels to go. He offered to accompany her, but she declined the offer; she had plenty to think about in her walk home over the Downs. “You’re mighty pernickety to-day,” he twitted her, rather relieved to be let off the consequences of the offer gallantry had prompted, and went with her as far as the door, and the old men sitting with their pipes in the chimney corner commented, “A hefty pair.”