Secret Bread | Page 7

moment to drop his carefully-prepared offering between two gorse-bushes. Boase smiled, then sighed, wondering where such an abnormal dread of ridicule as Ishmael's would lead; it was a result of the Parson's calling that he should feel anxiety as to the ultimate trend of things.
The two trudged on in silence; their friendship was so tried, and the understanding between them so complete, that they sometimes spent an hour or more together with hardly a remark. Finally Ishmael broke silence.
"You coming to Cry the Neck this evening, Da Boase?" he asked.
"I'm going to look in before supper," replied the Parson; and unconsciously his lips took on a sterner line. He was building much on that evening's "Crying the Neck," which for the first time Ishmael was to attend, and at the succeeding supper Boase meant him to take his place at the head of the table, as future master of Cloom. "Crying the Neck" was a moribund custom in the eighteen-fifties, and it was the Parson, with an eye to its possibilities, who had encouraged what proved to be its last revival.
"Mr. Lenine's coming," remarked Ishmael presently.
"Ah! Is he coming alone?" asked Boase carelessly.
"Happen he will, or maybe they'll all come, but Mrs. Lenine always says she must stay in of an evening when others are trapesing," replied Ishmael, with equal carelessness. For they were Cornishmen, these two, and the Parson would no more have asked outright "Is Phoebe coming?" than Ishmael would have given a direct answer.
Lenine's mill, known as Vellan-Clowse, which means "The Mill by the Wood," nestled in a valley below the Cloon moor where the leet ran along built-up banks to the dam and then down a succession of wooden troughs to the crest of the wheel. Facing the mill was the great cluster of elms that headed the valley, and behind only a tiny little yard divided it from the steepness of the hillside. The trees were the biggest for miles in that wind-swept district, and the bed of the valley showed green and lush with its marshy pastures, where the ugly red and white cows were tearing at the grass. The wheel was standing dumb, as harvest was not yet garnered, and Boase and Ishmael passed the mill door and went on to the house. There the door stood open, as did the further one at the end of the cool, straight passage that looked dark by contrast with the yard beyond, where, under the blazing sun, a little girl was feeding some fowls. The whole scene, set in the black oblong of the doorway, was compact of blue and flame colour--the blue of the frock and the shadows and the pale flame of the gravel where the shadows lay and the deeper flame fowls clustered. The man and the boy looked through for a moment in silence, then Phoebe turned and saw them.
Phoebe Lenine, being a woman of some eight years old, shook the remains of the corn off her small blue lap with no signs of haste or discomposure, and, turning her back, called to a hidden corner of the yard.
"Fa?ther! Fa?ther! Passon's come to see you!"
"How d'you know I haven't called to see you, Miss Phoebe?" asked Boase, stepping into the passage. She ran and seized him by the knees, flinging back her head so that her dark curls hung away from her softly-rounded face. Her pouting mouth, always slightly open to show a hint of two little front teeth, laughed up at him, her dove's eyes narrowed with her mirth. Of Ishmael she took no more notice than if he had not been there, and he leant against the doorpost, scraping the earth with the toe of his hard little boot, his thumbs stuck in his belt.
"I be gwain to help cry the Neck over to Cloom!" announced Phoebe--to the Parson and at Ishmael--"and I be gwain to stay to th' supper, and maybe I'll dance wi' a chap. There's Maister Jacka's John-Willy would be proud to dance wi' I!"
"So you're fond of dancing, Phoebe?" asked the Parson.
"Sure 'nough! Dancen' and singen'--that's life, that is. Ef you can't dance and sing I don't see no good in liven'! I don't hold wi' chaps who think of nawthen but wanten' to be saved. Time 'nough for that when gettin' on for thirty!"
Ishmael winced at the hit, and the Parson laughed as he tied two of Phoebe's ringlets into a bow under her chin.
"There are ways and ways of remembering the Creator in the days of your youth, Phoebe," he said, "and one of them's by dancing and singing--if it's with the right kind of chap. I don't think much of Jacka's John-Willy; if you really want to be a great lady to-night you must get Ishmael to dance with you. He's going