Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/160

 farms, and old quarries, and bits of cedar wood. White and blue and purple Michaelmas daisies and flaming goldenrod bloomed gladly on the roadside. Shining shocks of grain dotted the stubble fields, and, here and there, in vivid green lay a field of young fall wheat.

At seven Fergussen drew up his horse beside a coffee-coloured stream that crossed beneath the road. He said:

"Look here, I think you'd better get out here and wash your face. You got more than a bit of mud on it that time you fell. I've got some sandwiches, too, in the cart and I'll give you one. You don't want to arrive at Heaslip's dirty and hungry, do you? Besides, both my legs is sound asleep along o' this bally box of yours."

They got out. Fergussen loosed the horse's headpiece and she began to crop the wet grass. He opened the canvas curtain of the cart and Delight looked in to see the glittering mass of salmon trout, whitefish, and lake herring lying on broken ice. There were his scales, his knives, his chopping board. There was a basket packed with slabs of finnan haddie. He took out his packet of lunch and a bottle of cold tea.

Delight was ravenous. She had eaten only a few mouthfuls of bread at breakfast and the long drive in the pure morning air had put her healthy body in a glow.

"I'd better wash my face first," she said.

"Well, p'raps you had. You'd be prettier company. There's a log we can sit on across the ditch. This here stream was all but dry when I passed it last, and now look at it, fairly boiling over."

Delight scrubbed her face with her wetted handkerchief till it shone like a schoolboy's and then came and sat down on the log beside the fish-dealer. He put a thick sandwich of bread and cheese into her hand and set the bottle of tea on the grass between them.