Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/82

 whose purple clusters of fruit were becoming dark and shiny.

"No. He's goin' to MacNeil's to pick hops. But he wants to see you first."

They found Solomon Sharroe sitting on the edge of the long table beneath the apple trees. His wife inside the shack was making a bundle of some bedding. Fawnie's hen with her lusty, fluttering brood about her, was scratching in the doorway. Solomon greeted Derek with a dignified inclination of his iron-grey head.

"Mr. Vale," he said, "I am goin' to leave Chard today and take all my family except Esther and her husband, and Jammery."

"And me, paw!" cried Fawnie. "I'm goin' to stay."

"You're goin' to stay," repeated Solomon, with a scornful gesture of his dark hand. "Nobody cares what you're goin' to do because you're so lazy. Even Beulah who is four years younger picks faster than you. Yet when the hot bread and the ham and the pickles are put on the table, you are the first one to sit down and eat all you kin." He turned to Derek with a sombre smile. "There is no harm in her, but she was made for play. The man who marries her will have to pick for the two of them."

"I wish you would come back to me," said Derek, abruptly, his eyes on the vast stretch of his thimbleberry canes, almost threatening in their imminent ripeness. "You know I never interfere with you."

"You are a gentleman," said Solomon, simply, "and I am a chief. I have given my word to Mr. MacNeil that I will take my family to him today, but next season we will come to you and stay till the last Spy ripens, if you need us. . . . Your uncle would have lent me five dollars, for I have done very badly at Chard's. I would repay it next