Marion took her aside and gave her a piece of cake. ‘It never rains but it pours,’ Prosser grumbled. ‘Here’s Harris badly, and now Hayes tells me he’s got a poisoned finger. I don’t know what we’ll do for the milking to-morrow.’ ‘There’s Fellows,’ said Marion. ‘Yes, it’s lucky we’ve got him. Why, he isn’t here either! What the devil’s the matter with them all?’ Marion said nothing. She had guessed long ago why Abner was not there. She had half suspected that he would not come to The Dyke without Mary, but her pride would not let her ask her father to invite the family from Wolfpits. In the bottom of her heart she doubted if she would dare to meet her old friend. It would be so difficult, and besides that she felt that the intuitions of the other woman might discover her own leaning toward Abner. It was too dangerous. Next morning Abner arrived at his usual hour. During the night Dr Hendrie had been summoned to The Dyke and had found that the neglected splinter in the cowman’s finger threatened him with blood-poisoning, and the loss of his arm. At dawn Mr Prosser had driven him in to the infirmary at Shrewsbury. Marion received Abner on his arrival. ‘Why didn’t you come up last night?’ she said. ‘That sort of thing bain’t much in my line,’ he replied. ‘I wanted you to come,’ she said. He only smiled awkwardly, and she wished that she had been more prudent. She told him that Hayes was in hospital and that Harris was laid up with influenza. It would be a convenience to them if he could take over Hayes’s work, which was the care and milking of the cows and the driving of milk-cans morning and night to Llandwlas station. He was astonished at this turn of luck, for he had expected to be dismissed with his harvest earnings in his pocket. For all that, he didn’t mean to take the job on false pretences. ‘So Harris has caught the influenza, has he?’ he said. ‘Yes, he sent up his little girl with a message last night.’ ‘Well,’ said he, ‘it wasn’t true. What Harris got was a damned good hammering from me—one that he won’t forget.’ She thrilled to hear him. In her eyes he had become a hero. She knew already that he could be gentle. It gave her a curious, almost physical pleasure to realise him as a fighting man, for every one in the district was aware of Harris’s iron strength. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said. ‘He only got what he asked for,’ said Abner, ‘with his dirty talk about young Mrs Malpas.’ ‘Mary Malpas . . .’ she said quickly. ‘Oh, I’m sick of hearing her name.’ She did not pass on to her father what Abner had told her. He came back from Shrewsbury that evening tired and depressed. ‘The doctors reckon that we were only just in time with poor Hayes,’ he said. ‘It’s a near shave for his left arm. They’ve had to open it right up to the shoulder and he’ll be lucky if he’s out of hospital by Christmas. I don’t know what we can do, with Harris ill as well.’ ‘There’s Fellows,’ she said.