Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/184

 selves in the breast of his shirt. Her muscles stiffened. Her legs gripped the planks. Another effort, and she had thrown him from her into the water. Down among the watercress—into the soft, cold bed of the stream. He cried out as he struck the water. It splashed all over her, yet through the flying drops she saw his face upturned, terrified, contorted with rage.

She was flying from the place. She kept out of sight of the house, dodging behind bushes till she reached an old broken wall, alongside which she ran in a crouching posture till she gained the barnyard. A flock of geese waddled towards her, squawking with wings upraised, their roguish little eyes twinkling up at her, Delight, the poor farm girl, dripping wet, exhausted, her pulses throbbing like so many separate hearts. She could not hear the noises of the barn for their din. She pressed herself into the straw-stack and listened. By degrees the geese settled down again to their supper, still scolding about her in an undertone, still casting jeering looks and rocking on their short legs when they noticed her. The sound of milk hissing against a tin pail came out to her. Old Peake was milking, then. She might safely reach the loft.

She crept around the corner towards the door that led to the loft. Mr. Heaslip had been working on a new text that day. Now, in the reddish light, the letters blazed out at her:

She fled with terror into the barn. Up the ladder she scrambled, thinking:

"Oh, let me once get up into the hay, and I'll hide there until morning. Then, in the early morning, I'll run away. Anywhere away from this frightening place."