He started forward, got his team into the straight, then turned round to Cilla. “By your leave, Miss Priscilla, there’s some of your sex have longish tongues. I’m proud of being to time, and here we’ve wasted five whole minutes. No man likes bringing cattle home in a lather, but these beauties will have to go.” “They’ll stand it, Will,” said Gaunt. “Never met a man myself who could better get a horse into shape and keep it so.” Will the Driver showed what his team could do. Like a true dalesman, he was proud of his own trade, and Gaunt had found a sure way to his ear. Between the white and sunlit limestone walls they swung, and between hedgerows where the bird-cherry showed its glossy leaves. Little, tinkling streams flew by them; and, up above the roadway hedges or the roadway walls, the clean, sweet fells raked forward to the blue and fleecy sky. To Priscilla it was a journey into the outskirts of that Beyond which tempted and enthralled her. The sunshine, the quick going of the coach, the deft, quiet interest which her companion aroused--all helped to round off this adventure into the heart of spring. They stopped at Rakesgill, to set down the scanty mail and a few odd packages, and to take up a passenger on the box seat. As at Garth, the villagers had met to see the mail-coach in, and Cilla watched the group, and listened to their banter, with a sense that the freshness of the growing year was blowing round their old-time jests. Widow Fletcher was waiting at the stile--the first on their right hand as they trotted out of Rakesgill--and it was plain, from her red, plump cheeks and her cheery air, that she was own sister to Widow Lister of Garth. “Nothing to pay?” she asked, as she took the basket into her hands. “No. Widows thrive well in these parts, and wear the luck of the rowan-berry in their cheeks,” said Will, flicking his whip. “Comes of losing men-folk’s company, Will--though thank ye for the basket.” “Men-folk are always wrong, ’twould seem, Widow Fletcher. Came of listening to a woman in those far-off Bible-times.” “Ay, Adam blamed Eve, and Eve’s been blaming Adam ever since. So we’re quits, Driver Will.” “Tongues are longer than time,” said Will, with a happy laugh. “I’ve naught to do with Eve and Adam, Widow, but I have to be at Keta’s Well come twelve o’clock.” “Like a man,” said the widow to herself, as she watched the coach go swiftly in the van of the light, smooth April dust. “Like a man, to be worsted by a lone widow’s tongue, and then to flick his horses up and drive away.” The driver checked his team again, a mile further up the road, to take another parcel from underneath the roomy driving-seat. This he laid on the top of a gate that opened on a farm-track. “Only a ham for farmer Joyce, Miss Priscilla,” he said, with the trick he had of laughing over his shoulder at passengers behind. “Seems he’s not just hungry, yet, or he’d be here for it.”