"Tha can mock as tha likes, Hiram Hey, but he’ll teach thee summat afore he’s done wi’ thee. Poor lad, though, I’m fair pitiful for him! He niver rests save when he’s abed, an’ not oft then, for I can hear him stirring mony a neet at after he’d earned his sleep." "Thinking of his sins, I reckon," growled Hiram. "Well, there’s some I know that hasn’t mouse-pluck enough for sinning. Besides, that’s owered wi’. He’s stiffening right enough—yet mony’s the time I wish him back to th’ owd careless days. He niver hes a gay word for us wenches now, an’ to see him wi’ his brothers ye mud weel think he war a score year older nor he’s ony call to be." Hiram had waited for this moment, chuckling at the overthrow in store for Martha’s championship of the master. "Stiffening, is he?" he said, pointing up the field and drawing his lips into a thin curve. "He may be—but he’s framing badly for a start." Martha, turning sharp about, saw the two figures come slowly down the wall-side toward the stile. Wayne’s head was bent low to Mistress Janet’s, as if he were pleading some urgent cause, and neither seemed to guess that they were watched. "Well?" said Martha defiantly. "There’s nowt wrong i’ that, is there? I’ve known he war soft on Mistress Ratcliffe iver sin’ last spring." Hiram stared at her, aghast that she could look so lightly on a grievous matter; and when he spoke there was honest anger in his voice, distinct from his usual carping tone. "Nowt wrong?" he said slowly. "What, when a Wayne goes courting a Ratcliffe? I can’t picture owt wronger, ony way, seeing what has come between ’em lately an’ aforetime." "Hoity-toity! That’s been Mistress Nell’s way o’ looking at it—but ’tisn’t mine. Look at ’em, Hiram, an’ say if they don’t mak a bonnie couple." "What’s bonniness to do wi’ ’t? They’re a bad stock, root an’ branch, is th’ Ratcliffes, an’ it ’ull be a sore day for Marsh when th’ Maister brings sich as yond to th’ owd house. Besides, he has sworn to kill her folk." "Well, ye cannot cut young hearts i’ two wi’ kinship, an’ that’s what I’m telling thee. Mistress Ratcliffe hes nawther father nor brother living, an’ them she dwells wi’ up at Wildwater are nowt so near to her but what a good lad’s love is nearer." "Hod thy whisht, lass!" cried Hiram on the sudden. "Th’ Maister is looking this way at last. Begow, but he mun hev had summat deep to say to her, or he’d have seen us afore this." Shameless Wayne reddened on seeing the occupants of the stile, and whispered to Janet, and the two of them turned quickly about, taking a cross-line back toward the moor. "Flaired to be spoken to by honest folk," said Hiram. "Flaired o’ thy sour face, more like," snapped Martha. Hiram was about to make one of his slow, exasperating responses when he clutched Martha by the arm and again pointed over the stile—not up the ploughed field this time, but across the pasture-land abutting on it.