“Eh, now, I’m to be scolded, am I?” The widow brushed a few tears away, and looked up into Hirst’s face with the timidity which had always served her well. “To be sure, I’ve no man-body to speak up for me. I mun bear my crosses meekly, for nobody heeds you much once you’re lone and widowed.” Hirst’s face, with all its jollity and kindliness, was lined deep by hardship, by fight in life’s open with such plain foes as weather, peevish soil, and foot-rot that attacked his sheep. The widow’s was rosy, plump, unmarked save by such little wrinkles as a baby carries; she had sat by the hearth all her days, sheltered by four walls, and death, when it had come to force her from the fireside warmth to the churchyard and her husband’s grave, had been no more than a worry which spoilt her own comfort for awhile. Yet the round, shining face, looking up into his, made Yeoman Hirst uneasy this morning; it put him in the wrong; it made him feel as if he had rebuked a kitten for playing with a ball of wool. “Well, we’re made as we’re made, Widow!” he cried, preparing to move on. “I only ask you to listen when I tell ye what a power o’ harm ye can do by scaring folk when the fever’s close at our doors.” “Yet you’re going to Shepston market, same as if Shepston hadn’t got fever in every other house.” “True,” said Hirst, his jaw set firm. “There’s need to go to Shepston, fever or no, if I’m to do right by the farm. There’s no need for stay-at-homes to chatter and wake a sleeping dog.” Widow Lister watched him go through the white, breathless sunlight, and for once she did not call him back. “They’re strange, is men,” she thought. “My own man was like Hirst--would run into any sort of danger if he’d a whim for it--yet he’d grow outrageous as a turkey-cock if I set my tongue round a lile, soft bit o’ gossip. Men, they never seem to understand life, poor bodies. Ah, there’s David coming up street. He’s a soft heart, he. I’ll just get him to see what ails yond canary bird o’ mine while he’s passing.” David, however, was impatient. He listened to the story of the bird’s ailments, but his air was brisk and downright, just as Yeoman Hirst’s had been. A man is apt to carry that air when he knows how close a danger lies to his womenfolk. “Starve him a bit, Widow. Cosset him less by the hearth, and he’ll come round, same as other men birds. I’ve a bigger job than canaries to see to.” Again the widow did not pursue him as he strode fiercely up toward Good Intent. “The fever’s come to Garth a’ready, I’m thinking,” she murmured dolefully. “If David’s lost half o’ the little wits he had, we’ve come to a fine pass.” David halted when he came to the gate of Good Intent. His face was full of suffering, and for that reason it showed a greater dignity. He unfastened the latch with sudden decision, as if ashamed of his cowardice, and stepped into the cool, grey porch, and stood at the door of the house-place.