“I should like to see them--should like to judge for myself, father, as you and Reuben Gaunt have done.” John Hirst had had his say, and now was minded to smooth the rough edges, as good-tempered men are apt to be when they have hurt a woman. “And shall do, then,” he said, drawing her to him. “Only choose a likelier comrade for the journey, lass, when the time comes for leaving Good Intent.” They had reached the hedge which Hirst and his men had been laying on the morning when Reuben Gaunt had come afresh into Priscilla’s life. Trim and low it stretched, the strokes of the bill-hook showing yellow between the green, primal budding of the thorns. “Good work, yond, though I say it myself,” muttered Farmer Hirst. “Yes, good work, father,” the girl answered absently. She was not thinking of the thorn-hedge. Her father’s “Choose a likelier comrade for the journey,” meant in all kindliness and desire to warn her, had cleared her outlook suddenly. Reuben Gaunt had looked love enough in these two weeks to have lasted another man a year, but she had disdained to acknowledge the meaning of his glances. Priscilla--even to herself--seldom lost that habit of drawing maiden skirts away from men when they showed a disposition to intrude; but this morning she was forced to see the matter in its true perspective. Words dropped by Reuben, as if haphazard, recurred to her. He was no longer the scarcely-seen interpreter of worlds beyond her reach; he grew on the sudden to be the man who had seen these lands beyond, and she wondered if that wild look in his eyes were the mirror of something gallant and good to look upon. The girl was so silent and so grave that her father twitted her good-naturedly. “Day-dreams, eh, lassie? They come in spring, I’ve noticed--ay, even to grizzled elders like myself.” “Day-dreams, or day-realities--I scarce know which, father,” she answered. Reuben Gaunt, meanwhile, was smarting under a sense of foolishness. Priscilla had laughed at him. The farmer had sent him about his business as if he were a hind. “I get queer welcomes in this Garth,” he said, watching father and daughter move up the fields. “’Twould seem it’s naught at all to own Garth’s biggest house and richest lands. Garth is a bit like Billy the Fool--likes or dislikes at sight, and always did, however good a man’s coat is.” Reuben was admitting unconsciously that his experience of the bigger world had led him to expect a welcome according to his station. He turned fretfully to return across the fields--in all his movements and his way of taking life he suggested something of a child’s perverseness, as if his body had aged and left his soul behind in the race of life.