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When at last he appeared she scarcely knew him. Glas Weetmanwas a big, though not fleshy, man of thirty with a large boyishface and a flat bald head. Now he had a thick dark beard. Hewas hungry, but his first desire was to be shaved. He stood beforethe kitchen mirror, first clipping the beard away with scissors, andas he lathered the remainder he said:

“Well, it’s a bad state of things, this, my sister dead and mymother gone to America. What shall us do!”

He perceived in the glass that she was smiling.

“There’s naught funny in it, my comic gal,” he bawled indignantly,”what are you laughing at!”

“I wer’n’t laughing. It’s your mother that’s dead.”

“My mother that’s dead, I know.”

“And Miss Alice that’s gone to America.”

“To America, I know, I know, so you can stop making yourbullock’s eyes and get me something to eat. What’s been goingon here?”

She gave him an outline of affairs. He looked at her sternlywhen he asked her about his sweetheart.

“Has Rosa Beauchamp been along here?”

“No,” said Phemy, and he was silent. She was surprised atthe question. The Beauchamps were such respectable high-up people that to Phemy’s simple mind they could not possibly favour analliance, now, with a man that had been in prison; it was absurd,but she did not say so to him. And she was bewildered to findthat her conviction was wrong, for Rosa came along later in theday and everything between her master and his sweetheart wasjust as before; Phemy had not divined so much love and forgivenessin high-up people.

It was the same with everything else. The old harsh rushinglife was resumed, Weetman turned to his farm with an acceleratedvigour to make up for the lost time and the girl’s golden week ortwo of ease became an unforgotten dream. The pails, the guns,the harness, crept back into the kitchen. Spiders, cockroaches, andmice were more noticeable than ever before, and Weetman himselfseemed embittered, harsher. Time alone could never still him,there was a force in his frame, a buzzing in his blood. But therewas a difference between them now; Phemy no longer feared him. She obeyed him, it is true, with eagerness, she worked in the houselike a woman and in the fields like a man. They ate their mealstogether, and from this dissonant comradeship the girl in a dumbkind of way began to love him.

One April evening on coming in from the fields he found herlying on the couch beneath the window, dead plumb fast asleep,with no meal ready at all. He flung his bundle of harness to theflags and bawled angrily to her. To his surprise she did not stir. He was somewhat abashed, he stepped over to look at her. Shewas lying on her side. There was a large rent in her bodice betweensleeve and shoulder; her flesh looked soft and agreeable tohim. Her shoes had slipped off to the floor; her lips were foldedin a sleepy pout.

“Why, she’s quite a pretty cob,” he murmured.”She’s all right,she’s just tired, the Lord above knows what for.”

But he could not rouse the sluggard. Then a fancy moved himto lift her in his arms; he carried her from the kitchen and staggeringup the stairs laid the sleeping girl on her own bed. He thenwent downstairs and ate pie and drank beer in the candle-light,guffawing once or twice, “A pretty cob, rather.” As he stretchedhimself after the meal a new notion amused him: he put a plate-ful of food upon a tray together with a mug of beer and the candle. Doffing his heavy boots and leggings he carried the trayinto Phemy’s room. And he stopped there.

III

The new circumstance that thus slipped into her life did noteffect any noticeable alteration of its general contour and progress,Weetman did not charge towards her. Phemy accepted his mastershipnot alone because she loved him but because her powerfulsense of loyalty covered all the possible opprobrium. She did notseem to mind his continued relations with Rosa.