The bolts were being drawn, and a girl’s voice asked, ‘Who is there?’ I gave a jump to hear that voice, knowing it well for Grace’s, and had a mind to shout out my name.  But then I remembered there might be some in the house with her besides, and that I must remain disguised.  Moreover, laughing is so mixed with crying in our world, and trifling things with serious, that even in this pass I believe I was secretly pleased to have to play a trick on her, and test whether she would find me out in this dress or not.  So I spoke out in our round Dorset speech, such as they talk it out in the vale, saying, ‘A poor boy who is out of his way.’

Then she opened one leaf of the door, and asked me whither I would go, looking at me as one might at a stranger and not knowing who it was.

I answered that I was a farm lad who had walked from Purbeck, and sought an inn called the Why Not? kept by one Master Block.  When she heard that, she gave a little start, and looked me over again, yet could make nothing of it, but said: 

’Good lad, if you will step on to this terrace I can show you the Why Not? inn, but ‘tis shut these two months or more, and Master Block away.’

With that she turned towards the terrace, I following, but when we were outside of ear-shot from the door, I spoke in my own voice, quick but low: 

’Grace, it is I, John Trenchard, who am come to say goodbye before I leave these parts, and have much to tell that you would wish to hear.  Are there any beside in the house with you?’

Now many girls who had suffered as she had, and were thus surprised, would have screamed, or perhaps swooned, but she did neither, only flushing a little and saying, also quick and low, ’Let us go back to the house; I am alone.’

So we went back, and after the door was bolted, took both hands and stood up face to face in the passage looking into one another’s eyes.  I was tired with a long walk and sleepless night, and so full of joy to see her again that my head swam and all seemed a sweet dream.  Then she squeezed my hands, and I knew ’twas real, and was for kissing her for very love; but she guessed what I would be at, perhaps, and cast my hands loose, drawing back a little, as if to see me better, and saying, ’John, you have grown a man in these two months.’  So I did not kiss her.

But if it was true that I was grown a man, it was truer still that she was grown a woman, and as tall as I. And these recent sufferings had taken from her something of light and frolic girlhood, and left her with a manner more staid and sober.  She was dressed in black, with longer skirts, and her hair caught up behind; and perhaps it was the mourning frock that made her look pale and thin, as Ratsey said.  So while I looked at her, she looked at me, and could not choose but smile to see my carter’s smock; and as for my brown face and hands, thought I had been hiding in some country underneath the sun, until I