Priscilla of the Good Intent: A Romance of the Grey FellsSutcliffe, Halliwell
General
Priscilla of the Good Intent: A Romance of the Grey Fells
Sutcliffe, Halliwell
Country life -- Fiction; Courtship -- Fiction; England, Northern -- Fiction; Farm life -- Fiction; Mate selection -- Fiction
He woke from his dream, and gave the ewe a playful kick. “Look to your
own married life,” he laughed, “as I am hoping to look to mine before
the year is out.”
He glanced at the sun, and guessed that it was after four. Repentance
and memory of Peggy Mathewson slipped from him. He strode down the
fields; and, short-statured as he was, and slight of build, he carried
a look of bigness with him. It was Reuben’s holiday, as it was
Priscilla’s. The sun shone on him, just or unjust, and he stood apart
from himself and his past, and felt that the good love and the strong
love were his to ask and take.
Priscilla, waiting for the coach, and just five minutes before her
time, as her wont was, was surprised by Gaunt’s straight, forthright
air as he crossed the street of Keta’s Well. She had never seen him in
the light with which this witching day of April glamoured all the land.
Every man was better than he guessed to-day, and every woman comelier;
and down the breeze played Puck the Sprite, laughing at all wayfarers
as he laid the cobwebs on their eyes.
“How has your business sped, Cilla?” asked Reuben, lucky as he always
was in being five minutes before his time, instead of five minutes
after.
“Well,” she answered, lifting the eyes of truth to his. “And yours?”
“Well, also, Cilla. I have found what I came to Keta’s Well to seek.”
They plighted their troth--neither altogether understanding the long
glance--there in the grey road of Keta’s Well. Reuben’s eyes caught
honesty from Cilla’s, and she thought the mirror truthful; and, by and
by, Will the Driver came thundering down the road.
“Up to time, in spite of women’s tongues,” he laughed, pulling up his
team. “Lord help us drivers, Miss Priscilla, for we suffer much from
women’s tongues. Widow Fletcher will be waiting for me, too, on the
homeward road, if I know her, for ’tis her twice-a-day time to crack
talk with Will the Driver.”
Gaunt spoke little on the homeward journey, and Priscilla was strangely
silent, too. Passengers climbed up into the coach, or scrambled down,
but these two heeded little of what went on about them. There were
stoppages, at this hamlet and at that, to take up the mails which
Will stuffed into the sack that grew bulkier and bulkier as they went
along. From hill-top farmsteads lasses ran down, bareheaded and cleanly
outlined against the background of the fells, to give Will another
letter for his sack, or another parcel to be hidden underneath the box
seat. All was life and movement on the Garth highroad, but two who
travelled on it were thinking altogether of each other.
“I gathered these primrose blooms for you, Cilla,” said Reuben,
breaking one of their long silences.
“Was that your business, then, in Keta’s Well?” The girl’s laugh was
low and happy.
“Yes.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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