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“Go on with you, that’s a good bird, I tell you, with a full heart, as will lay in a month.”

“I doubt it’s a hen at all,” he protested.”O what a ravenous beak! Damned and done I am.”

Mrs. Witlow’s voice began indignantly to rise.

“O well,” mused her son, “it’s thrifty perhaps. It ain’t quite right, but it’s not so wrong as to make a fuss about, especially as I be pretty sharp set. And if it’s hens you want,” he continued triumphantly, dropping the crate of huddled fowls before her, “there’s hens for you; and a gander! There’s a gander for you, if it’s a gander you want.”

Leaving them all in his cottage yard he went and stalled the horse and cart at the inn, for he had no stable of his own. After supper he told his mother about the Sadgroves of Prattle Corner.”Prettiest girl you ever seen, but the shyest mottal alive. Hair like a squirrel, lovely.”

“An’t you got to go over and see Sophy tonight,” enquired his mother, lighting the lamp.

“O lord, if I an’t clean forgot that. Well I’m tired, shan’t go tonight. See her tomorrow.”

Mrs. Sadgrove had been a widow for ten years—and she was glad of it. Prattle Corner was her property, she owned it and farmed it with the aid of a little old man and a large lad. The older this old man grew, and the less wages he received (for Elizabeth Sadgrove was reputed a “grinder”), the more ardently he worked; the older the lad grew the less he laboured and the more he swore. She was thriving. She was worth money was Mrs. Sadgrove. Ah! And her daughter Mary, it was clear, had received an education fit for a lord’s lady. She had been at a seminary for gentlefolks’ females until she was seventeen. Well, whether or no, a clock must run as you time it; but it wronged her for the work of a farm, it spoiled her, it completely deranged her for the work of a farm; and this was a pity and foolish, because some day the farm was coming to her as didn’t know hay from a bull’s foot.

All this, and more, the young higgler quickly learned and plenty more he soon divined. Business began to flourish with him now; his despair was gone, he was established, he could look forward, to whatever it was he wanted to look forward, with equanimity and such pleasurable anticipation as the chances and charges of life might engender. Every week, and twice a week, he would call at the farm, and though these occasions had their superior business inducements they often borrowed a less formal tone and intention.

“Take a cup of tea, higgler?” Mrs. Sadgrove would abruptly invite him; and he would drink tea and discourse with her for half an hour on barn-door ornithology, on harness, and markets, the treatment of swine, the wear and tear of gear. Mary, always present, was always silent, seldom uttering a word to the higgler; yet a certain grace emanated from her to him, an interest, a light, a favour, circumscribed indeed by some modesty, shyness, some inhibition, that neither had the wit or the opportunity to overcome.

One evening he pulled up at the white palings of Prattle Corner. It was a calm evening in May, the sun was on its downgoing, chaffinches and wrens sung ceaselessly. Mary in the orchard was heavily veiled; he could see her over the hedge, holding a brush in her gloved hands, and a bee skep. A swarm was clustered like a great gnarl on the limb of an apple tree. Bloom was thickly covering the twigs. She made several timid attempts to brush the bees into the skep but they resented this.