She was laughing and crying as she talked, busy living over again the absurd scene which had yet been so vivid and poignant, but for once she did not receive the kindly smile with which he usually rewarded her attempts at humour. Instead, he turned away from her again, almost as if he had been wounded and wished to hide it. “What was Len doing, hanging about the place?” he enquired, surprising her both by his words and by his faintly-sharp tone, for he was a lenient master with his men. “Nay, what, he was only in the house half a minute or so! You’ve no call to be vexed with him, I’m sure. He just looked in to say you’d told him we were leaving, and to ask if there was anything he could do. He said his missis would be glad to come up any time to lend a hand with the packing, so I said the sooner we set about it, the better.” “I never told him we were going,” Kirkby said, in the same almost angry tone, making her stare again. “It was him as said it.... He said it was all over the spot, and had been for long; and he wanted to know if it was true.” She answered him soothingly as she carried off the pots to be washed in the back kitchen. “Ay, well, it doesn’t matter, does it, one way or t’other? He’d have had to know, anyway, before so long. I must say I was a bit surprised to find you’d been so glib about it, but it makes no odds. He didn’t tell _me_ it was all over the spot, but I might have guessed it. Folks always seem to know what you’re meaning to do a deal sooner than you do yourself!” He picked up his hat from a side table, and moved towards the door. The impulse was strong in him to tell her of Machell’s application, but he restrained it, being uncertain of her attitude. He was longing for sympathy on the subject, despising himself as he did for the bitterness in his heart, and knowing that sympathy would assuage it. But she had never seemed to value his position as head gardener,--had, indeed, constantly made him feel that it was something to be ashamed of,--and he dared not risk the reference. Yet he lingered before going out, still playing about the question, as if hoping that something or other might occur to ease the trouble in his mind. “I can’t say I’m best pleased to think Len’s been settling our business for us,” he said, as she came back into the kitchen. “He’s paid to attend to his own job, and not to go prying into ours.” “He hasn’t settled it for us,--not he! We’ve settled it ourselves. And as for a bit of gossip and such-like, I don’t see how you’re going to keep folks from taking an interest in those about them.”