Page:Mehalah 1920.djvu/191

Rh The rich marshes of Red Hall were unrivalled for the grazing of cattle and the rearing of young stock.

As Mehalah was well occupied, her mind was taken off from herself, and she was for a while satisfied with her position. Rebow had not spoken to her in the manner she so disliked, and she had small occasion to speak with the men. Her mother, on the contrary, seized every occasion to entangle them in talk, or to initiate a conversation with Rebow. He maintained a surly deference towards her, and condescended at times to answer her queries and allow himself to be drawn into talk by the old woman. When that was the case, Mehalah found excuse to leave the room and engage herself in the kitchen or among the cows.

Abraham Dowsing saw much less of her than formerly. The old man, with all his sulky humour and selfish greed, had got a liking for the girl. He was much at the Ray, but often about Red Hall, where he got his food.

If he went after the sheep for the day, Mehalah provided him with "baggings," provision during his absence.

Lambing time was at hand, when he would be away for some weeks, returning only occasionally. Mehalah noticed that the shepherd hesitated each time he received his food, as though he desired to speak to her, but put off the occasion. At last, one day at the beginning of February, when he was about to depart for the Ray, and would be absent some days, he said to her in a low dissatisfied tone, "I suppose, when I come back after the lambing, you'll have been to church with him."

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean?" repeated Abraham. "I mean what I say. I ain't one of those that says one thing and means another. Nobody can accuse me of that."

"I do not understand you, Abraham."

"There's none so dull as them that won't take," he pursued. "I don't hold, myself, that much good comes of going to church with a man, except this, that you fasten him, and he can't cast you off when he's tired of you."

Mehalah flushed up.

"Abraham," she said angrily, "I will not allow you to speak thus to me. I understand you now, and wish I did not."