He lifted his hat from his head with a distracted little gesture. She liked him, his quaint ways, his humour, his ignorance, and his slow masculinity. “Here, look here, Tom Smedley,” broke in Anne. “A moudiwarp! Did you find it dead?” he asked. “No, it bit me,” said Anne. “Oh, aye! An’ that got your rag out, did it?” “No, it didn’t!” Anne scolded sharply. “Such language!” “Oh, what’s up wi’ it?” “I can’t bear you to talk broad.” “Can’t you?” He glanced at Frances. “It isn’t nice,” Frances said. She did not care, really. The vulgar speech jarred on her as a rule; Jimmy was a gentleman. But Tom’s manner of speech did not matter to her. “I like you to talk _nicely_,” she added. “Do you,” he replied, tilting his hat, stirred. “And generally you _do_, you know,” she smiled. “I s’ll have to have a try,” he said, rather tensely gallant. “What?” she asked brightly. “To talk nice to you,” he said. Frances coloured furiously, bent her head for a moment, then laughed gaily, as if she liked this clumsy hint. “Eh now, you mind what you’re saying,” cried Anne, giving the young man an admonitory pat. “You wouldn’t have to give yon mole many knocks like that,” he teased, relieved to get on safe ground, rubbing his arm. “No indeed, it died in one blow,” said Frances, with a flippancy that was hateful to her. “You’re not so good at knockin’ ’em?” he said, turning to her. “I don’t know, if I’m cross,” she said decisively. “No?” he replied, with alert attentiveness. “I could,” she added, harder, “if it was necessary.” He was slow to feel her difference. “And don’t you consider it _is_ necessary?” he asked, with misgiving. “W—ell—is it?” she said, looking at him steadily, coldly. “I reckon it is,” he replied, looking away, but standing stubborn. She laughed quickly. “But it isn’t necessary for _me_,” she said, with slight contempt. “Yes, that’s quite true,” he answered. She laughed in a shaky fashion. “_I know it is_,” she said; and there was an awkward pause. “Why, would you _like_ me to kill moles then?” she asked tentatively, after a while. “They do us a lot of damage,” he said, standing firm on his own ground, angered. “Well, I’ll see the next time I come across one,” she promised, defiantly. Their eyes met, and she sank before him, her pride troubled. He felt uneasy and triumphant and baffled, as if fate had gripped him. She smiled as she departed. “Well,” said Anne, as the sisters went through the wheat stubble; “I don’t know what you two’s been jawing about, I’m sure.” “Don’t you?” laughed Frances significantly. “No, I don’t. But, at any rate, Tom Smedley’s a good deal better to my thinking than Jimmy, so there—and nicer.” “Perhaps he is,” said Frances coldly. And the next day, after a secret, persistent hunt, she found another mole playing in the heat. She killed it, and in the evening, when Tom came to the gate to smoke his pipe after supper, she took him the dead creature. “Here you are then!” she said.