The man was so full of his own thoughts that he did not see Widow Mathewson until the path had brought him to within a score of yards of her garden railing; and then, for shame’s sake, he had to come forward with a jauntiness that was obviously ill-assumed. “I’m here to give you good day,” he said. “After five years, ’tis only neighbourly to call.” “You’re here to see Peggy, and know it, Reuben Gaunt. We didn’t part such friends five years since that you need come trying to smooth me down with lies.” Gaunt reddened, and flicked a hazel-switch uneasily against his riding-breeches. “Lies go terrible smooth into a woman’s ear when she loves ye,” went on the other; “but they’re puffs o’ wind when she loathes the sight of a man.” “I find a deal of pleasant home-coming welcomes,” said Gaunt, stung into bitterness. “We’re not pleasant, ye see. Have to meet the weather, we, and rear the crops. You may be Mr. Reuben Gaunt of Marshlands, or you may be son to the devil that fathered ye--’tis all one to me. I like a man, or I don’t, and I never set eyes on one I liked less than ye.” “I’ll be saying good morning, then,” said Reuben, with an uneasy laugh. “Nay, but ye won’t--not just yet awhile. Ye came here to daften my lass Peggy again, so ye thought. Well, ye’re here, as it chances, to listen to sense from Peggy’s mother. It runs in our family, Reuben Gaunt, for the women to love undersized and weakly men. We’re overstrong, maybe, and must have some fretful babby or other to dandle, same as big men like to do. Peggy’s father was just such a one as you in his time, and I loved him. Ay, I cried when I buried him, and I cry still o’ nights sometimes when I wake and find an empty bed. Yet I looked down on him in life, Reuben Gaunt, as I look down on you. Queer oddments go to make up a woman.” “That’s true, mother,” came Peggy’s low, rich voice. She had returned from a haphazard scramble on the moor, and had listened to half the talk with a simplicity that came of pagan habits. “Go within doors, Peggy!” snapped her mother, turning sharply. “D’ye want to catch the plague, or what, that ye go breathing the same air as Reuben Gaunt?” But Peggy did not move. Perhaps the closest bond between these two, strong mother and strong daughter, was the knowledge that they feared each other not at all. “We’re made up of oddments, ye and me, mother. Ay, ’tis a good word, that. I happen to love Reuben Gaunt, as you loved father once--and ye’d better just leave us to it.” Widow Mathewson smiled on them both--a smile that was bitter in its avowal of defeat, in its hapless faith that what would be, would be, and that the would-be must be bad. “Sorrow along, Peggy,” she said. “If ye choose to strew your way with tears, ’tis not I that ought to blame you. Good night, Reuben Gaunt.” The quiet dignity of her farewell troubled Gaunt more than all her previous outspokenness had done. He felt like a country clown in the presence of a lady, and he hated Widow Mathewson.