It was the curate's quietly resolved manner, his air of exaggerated conspiracy, that drove Prudence to this unusual submissiveness. She knew quite well that the little man was making up his mind to propose to her, and she did not wish to give him the opportunity. Her decision was taken abruptly, after meeting him one day on the high road along which she was walking briskly with her back to the tall chimneys and her face to the wind and the little village which lay half-way between Wortheton and the junction town which connected it with the busier world from which it held aloof. The curate was cycling from the opposite direction. He was due to attend a meeting within the half-hour and had barely time to arrive at the appointed place; but when he came face to face with Prudence he alighted nimbly from his machine, and, pulling off a heather mixture glove, extended an eager hand. For a moment she allowed him to hold hers in his grip, and found herself wondering while she faced him which of his admirers had knitted the gloves for him.

Then she withdrew her hand and remarked, for the lack of something more interesting to say, that the wind was boisterous.

"Yes," he said; "you have it against you. Why not face about? It's a great help at one's back."

This suggestion Prudence considered artful without being brilliant. She had no desire for his company on the return journey.

"I love to feel it in my face," she said. "And since you prefer it behind it is well we are travelling in opposite directions."

But the curate was not to be disposed of so easily. He turned his cycle and fell into step beside her. Prudence was taller than he; he was obliged to look up from under the wide brim of his hat when regarding her, a reversal of the usual order which occasioned him secret vexation.

"One so seldom gets a chance of seeing you alone," he said. "I suppose it is because you are so much younger that your sisters make so much of you. They care for you tremendously. It is beautiful to observe their devotion."

This view of her family's watchful mistrust as a manifest sign of their devotion was new to Prudence and afforded her amus.e.m.e.nt. She wondered whether he was altogether sincere in what he said, or if he were indulging in unsuspected satire.

"I find it a little trying sometimes to be the family pet," she returned demurely. "The position is rather like that of the cat of the house which gets called indoors when it would prefer to remain in the garden.

I wonder myself at times why the cat obeys the summons."

He experienced a little difficulty in following her train of thought.

"It's thinking of the milk, I suppose," he suggested, whereat Prudence laughed.

"I dare say that explains it--economic dependence explains many uncomfortable things. I haven't much sympathy with the domesticated cat," she added. "She should ignore the call, and remain in the garden and eat birds."

"Surely," he said, a little pained, "you wouldn't wish it to do that?

It's so cruel."

"So is eating mutton," she answered flippantly; "but we all do it."

He digested this for a moment, found no adequate answer, and turned the conversation.

"I was thinking of you as I rode," he said, in tones into which he threw an inflection of tenderness which she could not fail to detect. "I scarcely dared to expect so much happiness as to meet you like this.

You are a tremendous walker. Do you realise how far you are from home?"

He still hoped to induce her to turn and walk back with him. He would be late for his meeting in any case. He was too mentally flurried to decide how he should explain the defection: he was not very ready at invention; but the sight of Prudence's fair indifferent face drove him to the verge of recklessness; no consideration at the moment was strong enough to tear him from her side.

"The farther the better," Prudence answered. "I am walking into the sunset." She turned her face to the westering sun and the warm glow in the sky that lit its declining glory. "When I turn about I see only the chimneys; they blot out everything for me."

"But one can't see them from this distance," he insisted, and paused and looked back to verify his statement.

Prudence smiled faintly.

"I can," she said. "I see them even in my dreams."

"I think myself they look rather fine," he said. "The red bricks against the trees are arresting."

"Yes," she agreed, and smiled at him more directly. He felt that he had struck a happy note and was unnecessarily elated.

"All great industries appeal to me," he continued as they walked on again. "I'm tremendously interested in the factory--and in the workpeople. They are so human and yet simple. I enjoy working among them. And Mr Graynor is so generous. The workpeople think very highly of him. I have been very happy in my labours since coming here."

Prudence, missing the guile in this, looked at him in astonishment.

"Really!" she said. "You are easily pleased."

"You think so?" He drew a little nearer to her; his disengaged hand, hanging at his side, brushed lightly against hers. "I don't think that myself. But you see I have met much kindness here, and--forgive my saying so--it is such a happiness in itself to know you. I doubt whether you understand what a priceless pleasure that is to me."

"It is very flattering of you to say so," Prudence broke in hastily, and not so much turned the conversation as jerked it into an impersonal channel. "Look at that gorgeous splash of red on those clouds. Isn't it just as though they were catching fire?"

"Yes," he said in a flattened voice, feeling the rebuff; "it's very fine."

"Isn't it? And that warm light on the trees... You can see it spreading along the branches. They're all aglow. If it could only last!"

"'The light of the whole world dies when day is done,'" quoted the curate sentimentally, and gazed in rapt admiration upon her face which was all aglow too, but owed nothing of its colour to the sunset. "You look like one inspired," he added. "I wish I could sketch you as I see you now."

Prudence made an impatient movement.

"I don't believe you care a bit for beautiful scenery," she said.

"I do," he a.s.sured her eagerly. "I admire everything beautiful. I...

Never mind the sunset now. I'm thinking of you. I can't think of anything else. I want to--"

"Oh!" she interrupted, with a note of sharp relief in her voice, and turned an embarra.s.sed face in the direction of a solitary pedestrian, who appeared opportunely round a bend in the road, and slowly advanced, bearing a bundle in her arms, which at first the girl failed to recognise for an infant, wrapped in an old shawl. "There's some one I want to speak to," she said, and blessed Bessie Clapp for her timely appearance--"some one I know."

"I'll wait," he said, still resolute though considerably ruffled at the interruption.

Prudence regarded him frowningly.

"No," she insisted, "you mustn't wait. I want to see her alone. I shall walk back with her."

"That isn't altogether kind," he said--"to dismiss me. But I may see you another time?"

He held out his hand and waited. If he expected a direct answer to his tentative suggestion, he was disappointed. Prudence shook hands hurriedly, murmured a breathless good-bye, and left him to mount his cycle and ride in unclerical mood to his neglected meeting, where he accounted for his unpunctuality by confessing to a puncture which he omitted to explain was caused by a thorn which he had painstakingly placed in the road and ridden over when a quarter of a mile from the town. Which proves what an amount of trouble a conscientious person will take in the insincere evasion of a direct lie.

Prudence meanwhile advanced to meet the girl in the road. As the distance between them decreased she discovered that what the other carried in her arms was not an inanimate bundle, as she had supposed, but a little child. Instantly her interest quickened. The unexpected appearance of Bessie Clapp had seemed to her merely opportune at a moment when any diversion would have been welcome, but the sight of Bessie with a baby in her arms--presumably her own baby--caught her attention away from her immediate concerns and brought the other's affairs into greater prominence. She had always believed that this girl had been hardly dealt by, and no one had ever considered it worth while to enlighten her. Prudence's sense of justice was in arms, and her liking for Bessie, whom she had known from childhood, awoke anew at sight of the beautiful tragic face with its look of pa.s.sionate antagonism. She halted in the girl's path and accosted her with disarming friendliness.

"I'm so glad to meet you," she said. "I thought you had left this neighbourhood altogether."

"There are some as would like to make me leave," said Bessie Clapp, her dark unsmiling gaze on the fair tranquillity of the younger, happier face. "I've been badgered enough. We'm living in the little village down over the hill."

"Just five miles away! And I never knew." Prudence bent suddenly over the bundle in her arms. "Is this your child?" she asked.

"Yes; he's mine."

There was proprietorship but no pride in the admission. It was Prudence's hand which pulled the covering away from the tiny face.

"Oh!" she said, and half drew back, and then bent again compa.s.sionately over the ugly little mottled piece of humanity in the beautiful young mother's arms. "I've never seen so young a baby before. What do you call him?"

"He isn't christened," the sullen voice responded. "I've no patience with those silly customs."

"But," began Prudence, and looked perplexed, "he'll have to have a name of his own some time."