Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/152

144 I said to myself, "five minutes' start in life and eighteen months in courtship is no such bad allowance for Obed. Perhaps he will allow me now to have my turn."

I had this thought in my head as I drew near Vellingey in a light gig hired from the Truro post-master. It was a rainy afternoon in January, and a boisterous north-wester blew the Atlantic weather in our teeth as we mounted the rise over Vellingey churchtown. My head being bent down, I did not observe the figure of a woman coming up the village street, but looked up on hearing the sound of her clogs close beside the gig. It was Selina, tearful, carrying a bundle.

"Whatever is the matter?" I asked, on pulling up.

"They've turned me to door!" she moaned. "My dear, they've turned me to door!"

She was tramping home to her cousins in St. Day parish. Not another night would she sleep at Vellingey—to be trampled on. Of course she accused the "foreign woman": but I, it seemed, had started the quarrel this time; or, rather, it started over the preparations for my home-coming—some trifling matter of cookery. Selina knew my tastes. Margit professed to know them better. Such are women.

I own that as I sent the poor soul on her way, with a promise that the gig should carry back her boxes from Vellingey and a secret resolve that she