r down a few steps into
a space where a paved walk led between two beds of vegetables, bordered
with a narrow edge of pinks, daisies, and gilliflowers, to a seat under
the shade of an old apple tree, looking out, as this was high ground,
over the broad river full of shipping.

"Stead! Stead, good old Stead," she cried, "to come just as I was half
dead with white seam and scolding! Emlyn here! Emlyn there! And she's
ready with her fingers too. She boxed mine ears till they sang again
yesterday."

"The jade," muttered Stead. "What for?"

"Only for looking out at window," said Emlyn. "How could I help it, when
there were six outlandish sailors coming up the street leading a big
black bear. Well, Stead, and are you all going to live with Jeph in his
castle, and will you take me?"

"He asks me not," said Stead, and began to read the letter, to which
Emlyn listened with many little remarks. "So Patience and Rusha wont go.
I marvel at them, yet 'tis like sober-sided old Patty! And mayhap among
the bogs and hills 'tis lonelier than in the gulley. I mind a trooper
who had served in Ireland telling my father it was so desolate he would
not banish a dog there. But what did he say about home, Stead, I thought
it was all yours?"

Stead explained, and also the possibility of endeavouring to rebuild the
farmhouse. If he could go to Mr. Elmwood with thirty pounds he thought
it might be done. "And then, Emlyn, when that is saved (and I have five
pounds already), will you come and make it your home for good and all?"

"Stead! oh Stead! You don't mean it--you--Why, that's sweethearting!"

"Well, so it is, Emlyn," said Stead, a certain dignity taking the place
of his shyness now it had come to the point. "I ask you to be my little
sweetheart now, and my wife when I have enough to make our old house
such as it was when my good mother was alive."

"Stead, Stead, you always were good to me! Will it take long, think
you? I would save too, but I have but three crowns the year, and that
sour-faced Rachel takes all the fees."

"The thing is in the hands of God. It must depend on the crops, but
with this hope before me, I will work as never man worked before," said
Stead.

"And I will be mistress there!" cried Emlyn.

"My wife will be mistress wherever I am sweet."

"Ah, ha!" she laughed, "now I have something to look to, I shall heed
little when the dame flouts me and scolds me, and Joan twits me with her
cousin the 'prentice."