“If the ivy cannot find a tree it creeps along the ground, Chrissy.”

“Ess, it do; or else falls headlong awver the first bank it comes to.  Phoebe’s so helpless a maiden as ever made a picksher.  I mind her at school in the days when we was childer together.  Purty as them china figures you might buy off Cheap Jack, an’ just so tender.  She’d come up to dinky gals no bigger ‘n herself an’ pull out her li’l handkercher an’ ax ’em to be so kind as to blaw her nose for her!  Now Will’s gone, Lard knaws wheer she’ll drift to.”

“To John Grimbal.  Any man could see that.  Her father’s set on it.”

“Why don’t Will write to her and keep her heart up and give her a little news?  ‘Twould be meat an’ drink to her.  Doan’t matter ‘bout mother an’ me.  We’ll take your word for it that Will wants to keep his ways secret.  But a sweetheart—­’tis so differ’nt.  I wouldn’t stand it!”

“I know right well you wouldn’t.  Will has his own way.  We won’t criticise him.  But there’s a masterful man in the running—­a prosperous, loud-voiced, bull-necked bully of a man, and one not accustomed to take ‘no’ for his answer.  I’m afraid of John Grimbal in this matter.  I’ve gone so far as to warn Will, but he writes back that he knows Phoebe.”

“Jan Grimbal’s a very differ’nt fashion of man to his brother; that I saw in a moment when they bided with us for a week, till the ’Three Crowns’ could take ’em in.  I hate Jan—­hate him cruel; but I like Martin.  He puts me in mind o’ you, Clem, wi’ his nice way of speech and tender quickness for women.  But it’s Phoebe we’m speaking of.  I think you should write stern to Will an’ frighten him.  It ban’t fair fightin’, that poor, dear Phoebe ‘gainst the will o’ two strong men.”

“Well, she’s had paltry food for a lover since he went away.  He’s got certain ideas, and she’ll hear direct when—­but there, I must shut my mouth, for I swore by fantastic oaths to say nothing.”

“He ought to write, whether or no.  You tell Will that Jan Grimbal be about building a braave plaace up under Whiddon, and is looking for a wife at Monks Barton morning, noon, an’ evening.  That’s like to waken him.  An’ tell him the miller’s on t’other side, and clacking Jan Grimbal into Phoebe’s ear steadier than the noise of his awn water-wheel.”

“And she will grow weak, mark me.  She sees that red-brick place rising out of the bare boughs, higher and higher, and knows that from floor to attics all may be hers if she likes to say the word.  She hears great talk of drawing-rooms, and pictures, and pianos, and greenhouses full of rare flowers, and all the rest—­why, just think of it!”

“Ban’t many gals as could stand ’gainst a piano, I daresay.”

“I only know one—­mine.”

Chris looked at him curiously.

“You ‘m right.  An’ that, for some queer reason, puts me in mind of the other wan, Martin Grimbal.  He was very pleasant to me.”