months spent upon other farms he would be fully equipped in agricultural knowledge and in a position to start on his own account. Would not a farmer want a wife, and should a farmer’s wife be a drawing-room wax-figure, or a woman who understood farming? Notwithstanding the pleasing answer returned to him by the silence, he resolved to go his journey.
One morning when they sat down to breakfast at Talbothays Dairy some maid observed that she had not seen anything of Mr. Clare that day.
“O no,” said Dairyman Crick. “ Mr. Clare has gone hwome to Emminster to spend a few days wi’ his kinsfolk.”
For four impassioned ones around that table the sunshine of the morning went out at a stroke, and the birds muffled their song. But neither girl by word or gesture revealed her blankness. “He’s getting on towards the end of his time wi’ me,” added the dairyman, with a phlegm which unconsciously was brutal; “and so I suppose he is beginning to see about his plans elsewhere.”