Between six and seven o'clock in the evening of the same day a young man descended the hills into the valley of the Exe, at a point about midway between Silverthorn and the residence of Margery's grandmother, four miles to the east.
He was a thoroughbred son of the country, as far removed from what is known as the provincial, as the latter is from the out-and-out gentleman of culture.His trousers and waistcoat were of fustian, almost white, but he wore a jacket of old-fashioned blue West-of-England cloth, so well preserved that evidently the article was relegated to a box whenever its owner engaged in such active occupations as he usually pursued.His complexion was fair, almost florid, and he had scarcely any beard.
A novel attraction about this young man, which a glancing stranger would know nothing of, was a rare and curious freshness of atmosphere that appertained to him, to his clothes, to all his belongings, even to the room in which he had been sitting.It might almost have been said that by adding him and his implements to an over-crowded apartment you made it healthful.This resulted from his trade.He was a lime-burner; he handled lime daily; and in return the lime rendered him an incarnation of salubrity.His hair was dry, fair, and frizzled, the latter possibly by the operation of the same caustic agent.He carried as a walking-stick a green sapling, whose growth had been contorted to a corkscrew pattern by a twining honeysuckle.
As he descended to the level ground of the water-meadows he cast his glance westward, with a frequency that revealed him to be in search of some object in the distance.It was rather difficult to do this, the low sunlight dazzling his eyes by glancing from the river away there, and from the 'carriers' (as they were called) in his path--narrow artificial brooks for conducting the water over the grass.
His course was something of a zigzag from the necessity of finding points in these carriers convenient for jumping.Thus peering and leaping and winding, he drew near the Exe, the central river of the miles-long mead.
A moving spot became visible to him in the direction of his scrutiny, mixed up with the rays of the same river.The spot got nearer, and revealed itself to be a slight thing of pink cotton and shepherd's plaid, which pursued a path on the brink of the stream.The young man so shaped his trackless course as to impinge on the path a little ahead of this coloured form, and when he drew near her he smiled and reddened.The girl smiled back to him; but her smile had not the life in it that the young man's had shown.
'My dear Margery--here I am!' he said gladly in an undertone, as with a last leap he crossed the last intervening carrier, and stood at her side.
'You've come all the way from the kiln, on purpose to meet me, and you shouldn't have done it,' she reproachfully returned.
'We finished there at four, so it was no trouble; and if it had been--why, I should ha' come.'
A small sigh was the response.
'What, you are not even so glad to see me as you would be to see your dog or cat?' he continued.'Come, Mis'ess Margery, this is rather hard.But, by George, how tired you dew look! Why, if you'd been up all night your eyes couldn't be more like tea-saucers.You've walked tew far, that's what it is.The weather is getting warm now, and the air of these low-lying meads is not strengthening in summer.I wish you lived up on higher ground with me, beside the kiln.You'd get as strong as a hoss! Well, there; all that will come in time.'
Instead of saying yes, the fair maid repressed another sigh.
'What, won't it, then?' he said.
'I suppose so,' she answered.'If it is to be, it is.'
'Well said--very well said, my dear.'
'And if it isn't to be it isn't.'
