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“Nay lass, niver,” smiled the wan Maurice.”He was fur enough away from me when I slipped.”

“Oh, ah!” cried the Fräulein, not understanding.

“Yi,” smiled Maurice indulgently.

“I think you’re mistaken,” said the father, rather pathetically, smiling at the girl as if she were “wanting”.

“Oh no,” she cried.”I seehim.”

“Nay, lass,” smiled Maurice quietly.

She was a Pole, named Paula Jablonowsky: young, only twenty years old, swift and light as a wild cat, with a strange, wild-cat way of grinning. Her hair was blonde and full of life, all crisped into many tendrils with vitality, shaking round her face. Her fine blue eyes were peculiarly lidded, and she seemed to look piercingly, then languorously, like a wild cat. She had somewhat Slavonic cheekbones, and was very much freckled. It was evident that the Vicar, a pale, rather cold man, hated her.

Maurice lay pale and smiling in her lap, whilst she cleaved to him like a mate. One felt instinctively that they were mated. She was ready at any minute to fight with ferocity in his defence, now he was hurt. Her looks at Geoffrey were full of fierceness. She bowed over Maurice and caressed him with her foreign-sounding English.

“You say what you lai-ike,” she laughed, giving him lordship over her.

“Hadn’t you better be going and looking what has become of Margery?” asked the Vicar in tones of reprimand.

“She is with her mother–I heared her. I will go in a whai-ile,” smiled the girl, coolly.

“Do you feel as if you could stand?” asked the father, still anxiously.

“Aye, in a bit,” smiled Maurice.

“You want to get up?” caressed the girl, bowing over him, till her face was not far from his.

“I’m in no hurry,” he replied, smiling brilliantly.

This accident had given him quite a strange new ease, an authority. He felt extraordinarily glad. New power had come to him all at once.

“You in no hurry,” she repeated, gathering his meaning. She smiled tenderly: she was in his service.

“She leaves us in another month–Mrs Inwood could stand no more of her,” apologized the Vicar quietly to the father.

“Why, is she–?”

“Like a wild thing–disobedient, and insolent.”

“Ha!”

The father sounded abstract.

“No more foreign governesses for me.”

Maurice stirred, and looked up at the girl.

“You stand up?” she asked brightly.”You well?”

He laughed again, showing his teeth winsomely. She lifted his head, sprung to her feet, her hands still holding his head, then she took him under the armpits and had him on his feet before anyone could help. He was much ta
ller than she. He grasped her strong shoulders heavily, leaned against her, and, feeling her round, firm breast doubled up against his side, he smiled, catching his breath.

“You see I’m all right,” he gasped.”I was only winded.”

“You all raïght?” she cried, in great glee.

“Yes, I am.”

He walked a few steps after a moment.

“There’s nowt ails me, Father,” he laughed.

“Quite well, you?” she cried in a pleading tone. He laughed outright, looked down at her, touching her cheek with his fingers.

“That’s it–if tha likes.”

“If I lai-ike!” she repeated, radiant.

“She’s going at the end of three weeks,” said the Vicar consolingly to the farmer.



II



While they were talking, they heard the far-off hooting of a pit.

“There goes th’ loose a’,” said Henry, coldly.”We’re notgoing to get that corner up to-day.”

The father looked round anxiously.

“Now, Maurice, are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m all right. Haven’t I told you?”

“Then you sit down there, and in a bit you can be getting dinner out. Henry, you go on the stack. Wheer’s Jim? Oh, he’s minding the hosses. Bill, and you, Geoffrey, you can pick while Jim loads.”

Maurice sat down under the wych elm to recover. The Fräulein had fled back. He made up his mind to ask her to marry him. He had got fifty pounds of his own, and his mother would help him. For a long time he sat musing, thinking what he would do. Then, from the float he fetched a big basket covered with a cloth, and spread the dinner. There was an immense rabbit pie, a dish of cold potatoes, much bread, a great piece of cheese, and a solid rice pudding.

These two fields were four miles from the home farm. But they had been in the hands of the Wookeys for several generations, therefore the father kept them on, and everyone looked forward to the hay harvest at Greasley: it was a kind of picnic. They brought dinner and tea in the milk-float, which the father drove over in the morning. The lads and the labourers cycled. Off and on, the harvest lasted a fortnight. As the high road from Alfreton to Nottingham ran at the foot of the fields, someone usually slept in the hay under the shed to guard the tools. The sons took it in turns. They did not care for it much, and were for that reason anxious to finish the harvest on this day. But work went slack and disjointed after Maurice’s accident.