Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/191

 The door was shut in his face. The lock clicked. The red in Kirke's cheeks became scarlet. He turned angrily to the window where Mr. Heaslip was now visible, seating himself with a benign expression, his Bible before him.

"You've used this poor geerl very badly!" shouted Kirke.

A hand—Mrs. Heaslip's—appeared inside the pane. The blind was drawn.

"Weel—I'm domned!" said Kirke.

They were bowling along swiftly towards Brancepeth now. Delight was nursing her basket, scarcely able to believe that she was delivered safely from the Heaslips, that her tea-set was safe on her lap. Kirke had even arranged with Peake to take her trunk to his daughter's house on his wheelbarrow, and to have his daughter's husband deliver it at Kirke's shop the next day, when he was driving in with a load of turnips. Delight had, by his order, lifted the lid and found her clothes neatly packed within. She had taken out her brown cloth jacket and rather crushed velvet tam with a quill in it, and a clean print dress. She had put on the jacket and tam, and laid the print dress on the top of the basket, blindly obeying Kirke.

She did not speak till they were long out of sight of the farm, then she asked in a trembling voice:

"Where are you going to take me, Mr. Kirke? I hope you don't think as I could ever go to work in Brancepeth again, for I couldn't. Besides no one there would ever give me work after the tales Mrs. Jessop would tell of