Hirst gave out that thunder laugh of his that rattled the pewter on the shelves. “Oh, and have you, maid? How many, then, has your father seen? Never get older that way myself, Cilla--sure as heartsome weather comes, I believe in ’t like a brother. There may come a storm in May enough to ding the house-walls in, but, come the next soft May, ye’ll find me like a lad again, thinking the sweetstuffs will never end.” He filled his pipe afresh, then kindled it with one of the paper spills which Cilla took from the mantel-shelf and lit for him at the wide hearth. “David is late,” he said. “Promised to be here by now, to talk over a matter of some wheel-axles I want from him, and to join me in a pipe.” “David? Is David coming to-night?” The girl was surprised by her own terror of David’s coming. To hold a secret from her father was ill enough, but to meet David, just to-night--she could not bear it. “Well, no, it seems he’s not,” the other answered drily, “or he’d have been here by now, surely. So you’ve had your frolic, lass, at Keta’s Well. And your packages all came up before you, with a message from Will the Driver that you were following on. Likely pranks, these--you finished the day with a gossip, eh? Your mother was the best soul that ever lived, but she aye relished a gossip, I remember.” Cilla had taken up some knitting, and bent her head under the pretence that she had dropped a stitch. Her father’s trust in her, his kindly banter, the old home look of everything, were each a separate reproach. “I walked from Willow Beck Bar, father. The evening was so still, and the look of the quiet fields tempted me.” “Would have tempted me, too. So long as you picked up no gallant on the road--but there, that’s not your way, lile lass.” David, meanwhile, had not forgotten his promise to Hirst; but on his way to keep it he found himself a half-hour before his time, and, meeting Billy in the fields, had good-humouredly joined him in a saunter. David, as he went up and down the fields with his boon comrade, had a feigned interest at first in the nests which Billy showed him; for he was thinking of Priscilla. But by and by his interest awoke; he saw the blackbird’s dappled clutch of five, and the wise throstle looking at him as she sat brooding, and the hedge-sparrow’s ragged nest, built in the kink of a grey limestone wall and bottomed with blue eggs; and he felt his boyhood return to him. “Now, there’s a wren a-sitting over across yond field,” said Billy. “Wouldn’t ye come with a body, David, and see yon same?” “Another day, Billy, another day. I’m due with Farmer Hirst, and must be getting back.” “Well, then, a body must turn when he must turn. There’s no denying that, David. I’m going to see the little shy bird a-sitting myself, so I’ll bid ye good e’en.” Billy the Fool was moving away, after the loose easy way he had of carrying his great body, when he felt a lack of something, and stopped and turned about.