“It seems a waste,” said Gaunt at night, after they had filled the bowl in the dairy, and fed the pigs, and stood watching the rest of the milk run down the croft in a narrow stream. “That’s the good farmer cropping out again in ye, Reuben. Of course ’tis wasteful, but there’s a deal of waste i’ life, as I’ve found it. ’Tis one o’ the things we hev to put up with, like. Was never good at a riddle, I; parson down yonder, maybe, could tell us why bairns are crying out i’ Garth for this milk we’re spilling--milk their mothers willun’t fetch, or send for, though I’d no way risk letting them have it, if they came.” Reuben watched the streamlet die down, a dirty white across the sun-scorched brown of the grass. Then he linked his arm in hers, and drew her toward the farm, and set her down in the hooded chair by the hearth while he found her pipe for her. “Good sakes!” said the widow softly. “To be waited on at my time o’ life, and by ye of all men, Reuben.” “That’s the queerness of things again,” he answered, lighting his own pipe. In other days there had been between them the silence of would-be enmity; now there was that lack of speech which friends use when they wish to talk together. Once Gaunt stirred the peats with his foot, and glanced at the widow’s face when the fire-glow lit it. “Seeking for signs o’ fever, Reuben?” she asked drily, turning her sharp old eyes to his. “Well, yes, I was, as you’ve caught me at it. I should miss you, if--if aught happened, mother.” “Naught happens to me, Reuben lad, save wear and tear. Would ye say that again--that ye’d miss me, if I went out along Peggy’s road?” “There’s none else to care for me since Peggy died. I’d had little care, and little love, i’ my short life, mother; that’s why they call me ‘running-water’ maybe.” Her memory went back to the days when she had been housekeeper to Reuben’s father. She recalled the hard-riding, hard-drinking master who had reared his son to the like gospel. She remembered the night when Billy the Fool was brought to Marshlands, and was afterwards turned out into the cold to answer for the sins of other folk. Many a bygone incident of Reuben’s boyhood stole out from those corners of the mind, which hide things half forgotten. And again she told herself, as she had told Priscilla on a day of April snow, that Reuben Gaunt had his father to thank for Marshlands and the money, but for no other chance in life. “Reuben,” she said, blowing quiet puffs of smoke across the hearth, “have ye no thought for yourself these days? Naught matters much for me either way, but fear o’ death comes natural to younger folk.” “There’s you and the farm to think of, mother. That’s enough to carry me forward.”