Innocent | Page 9

expect to have it all your own way! There's other
men after the girl as well as you!"
Clifford glanced him up and down.
"Yourself, I suppose?" he retorted.
"And why not?" sneered Landon.
"Only because there are two sides to every question," said Clifford,
carelessly, with a laugh. "And no decision can be arrived at till both are
heard!"
He climbed up among the other men and set to work, stacking steadily,
and singing in a fine soft baritone the old fifteenth- century song:

"Yonder comes a courteous knight, Lustily raking over the hay, He was
well aware of a bonny lass, As she came wandering over the way. Then
she sang Downe a downe, hey downe derry!
"Jove you speed, fair ladye, he said, Among the leaves that be so
greene, If I were a king and wore a crown, Full soon faire Ladye
shouldst thou be queene. Then she sang Downe a downe, hey downe
derry!"
Landon looked up at him with a dark smile.
"Those laugh best who laugh last!" he muttered, "And a whistling
throstle has had its neck wrung before now!"
Meanwhile Innocent had entered the farmhouse. Passing through the
hall, which,--unaltered since the days of its original building,-- was
vaulted high and heavily timbered, she went first into the kitchen to see
Priscilla, who, assisted by a couple of strong rosy-cheeked girls, did all
the housework and cooking of the farm. She found that personage
rolling out pastry and talking volubly as she rolled:
"Ah! YOU'LL never come to much good, Jenny Spinner," she cried.
"What with a muck of dirty dishes in one corner and a muddle of
ragged clouts in another, you're the very model of a wife for a farm
hand! Can't sew a gown for yerself neither, but bound to send it into
town to be made for ye, and couldn't put a button on a pair of breeches
for fear of 'urtin' yer delicate fingers! Well! God 'elp ye when the man
comes as ye're lookin' for! He'll be a fool anyhow, for all men are
that,--but he'll be twice a fool if he takes you for a life-satchel on his
shoulders!"
Jenny Spinner endured this tirade patiently, and went on with the
washing-up in which she was engaged, only turning her head to look at
Innocent as she appeared suddenly in the kitchen doorway, with her
hair slightly dishevelled and the wreath of wild roses crowning her
brows.
"Priscilla, where's Dad?" she asked.

"Lord save us, lovey! You gave me a real scare coming in like that with
them roses on yer head like a pixie out of the woods! The master? He's
just where the doctors left 'im, sittin' in his easy- chair and looking out
o' window."
"Was it--was it all right, do you think?" asked the girl, hesitatingly.
"Now, lovey, don't ask me about doctors, 'cos I don't know nothin' and
wants to know nothin', for they be close-tongued folk who never sez
what they thinks lest they get their blessed selves into hot water. And
whether it's all right or all wrong, I couldn't tell ye, for the two o' them
went out together, and Mr. Slowton sez 'Good-arternoon, Miss Friday!'
quite perlite like, and the other gentleman he lifts 'is 'at quite civil, so I
should say 'twas all wrong. For if you mark me, lovey, men's allus extra
perlite when they thinks there's goin' to be trouble, hopin' they'll get
somethin' for theirselves out of it."
Innocent hardly waited to hear her last words.
"I'm going to Dad," she said, quickly, and disappeared.
Priscilla Friday stopped for a minute in the rolling-cut of her pastry.
Some great stress of thought appeared to be working behind her
wrinkled brow, for she shook her head, pursed her lips and rolled up
her eyes a great many times. Then she gave a short sigh and went on
with her work.
The farmhouse was a rambling old place, full of quaint corners, arches
and odd little steps up and down leading to cupboards, mysterious
recesses and devious winding ways which turned into dark narrow
passages, branching right and left through the whole breadth of the
house. It was along one of these that Innocent ran swiftly on leaving the
kitchen, till she reached a closed door, where pausing, she listened a
moment-then, hearing no sound, opened it and went softly in. The room
she entered was filled with soft shadows of the gradually falling dusk,
yet partially lit by a golden flame of the after-glow which shone
through the open latticed window from the western sky. Close to the
waning light sat the master of the farm, still clad in his smock frock,

with his straw hat on the table beside him and his stick leaning against
the