Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/132

 'Cut up potatoes!' I said. 'Why we never work in the evenings at Mr. Vale's.' 'Weel,' says he, 'we work all the time here, and anyone who won't do it, can get out.

"It served you right for leaving me."

"Will ye hae me back, sir? Now that Newbigging's gone, me and the other lads'd get along fine."

"What about Mrs. Chard's pies?"

"Pies! I'm fair sick o' the very sicht o' pie. She gies them to us even for breakfast."

"Well, you've made your bed, Gunn, and you must lie on it—"

"It's straw and awfu' lumpy," interrupted Gunn.

"I'll not have Mr. Chard saying that I took you away from him," went on Derek. "What do you think you are, Gunn, a shuttlecock, to be bandied back and forth across the fence?"

"I'm no shuttlecock," said Gunn, his eyes snapping. "I'm a free British citizen, and I can't be forced to stop anywhere. I'll gang where I please."

"You can go to the devil as far as I'm concerned," said Derek, packing tobacco into his pipe with the handle of his pocket knife. "You played me a dirty trick, and I'm through with you."

Gunn turned away, his rosy face puckered with chagrin. "Weel, good-bye, and I'm no' afeerd to say that you'll wish you had me back before the summer's through." He hung about a moment, irresolutely, and then walked slowly back to Chard's.

Derek, impatient at the delay of the immigration officials in sending him help, had taken the train to York to impress them, if possible, with his extreme need. He could not believe that other farms were crying for succor so urgently as Grimstone. Yet the officials, though polite, were