“Lile lass,” she said, “ye’re fretting for Reuben.” Peggy shivered, and crept nearer the peat-fire. “Oh, I’m thinking all o’ ghosts, mother. He has to be away, and the fool I am to be needing him so, and there’s many a mile ’twixt this and his home-coming.” The widow smiled, but her face was full of compassion. “I loved your father i’ that way, Peggy. He was niver much to lean on, but I missed him sorely when he went down kirkyard lane.” “You’re sneering at Reuben again, mother.” The girl’s temper was frayed to-day and broken at the edges. “Nay, nay. I begin to think Reuben’s stauncher than your father iver war. Happen ye’ve come to your own, Peggy, for a man as can win a fell-race o’ the Linsall sort has summat behind it all. Ye’ll shape him by and by. Oh, ay, ye’ll shape him. Men are all like a blunt bit o’ millstone grit; they need a chisel, they.” Peggy o’ Mathewson’s crept nearer still to the peats. The light of the one lamp shone on the pewter and the delftware that was Ghyll’s special pride, and the fire-glow played bo-peep in corners of the living-room. “I scarce feel like a bride, mother,” said Peggy, after a long silence. “Tuts!” answered Widow Mathewson. “Few maidens do. Ye talk as if there were no modesty left i’ the world.” “I’m so cold. All day it has been like a goose walking ower my grave--just as I said to Reuben when we walked fro’ Linsall Fair.” The widow was easy in her mind to-night. Her hidden liking for Gaunt need not be checked so much in future; only she knew how bitterly she would miss Peggy in and about the house; but she knew, too, that it was idle or worse, to keep her lass from a home of her own. A glance at the girl’s face, white and pinched, might have startled Widow Mathewson; but she smoked her pipe, and looked into the grate, and hugged her self-content as a luxury seldom found at Ghyll. “Fiddle-me-ree,” she answered, with pleasant tartness. “Th’ only geese as are walking abroad, to my knowledge, are ye an’ Reuben--an’ he’s a gander. Oh, lass, Peggy, I’ve it all by heart! Niver sich a one i’ the world as your man; an’ ye know his shortcomings plain as your own face in a pool; an’ ye throw bits o’ pebble into th’ pool, just to stir his proper likeness into pleasanter shape; an’ ye call it loving the lad. Lord o’ mercy, there’s been many a woman at yond pool-edge afore your time, and will be after. I war there myseln once. ’Tis only nature.” Peggy got up and went out through the porch, and stood looking out and away across the moor. “I war there myseln once,” repeated Widow Mathewson, with a tolerant smile. “I munnot forget what ’twas like--just the wee, lile fairies dancing, an’ witchcraft ower the moor.” She knocked her pipe out on the grate, and youth touched her brown, scarred face for a moment. “Good sakes,” she murmured, “I’d like to be young again like that--cobwebs about my eyes or no. Better be a blithesome fool at two-and-twenty than a wiser one at sixty.”