“Mother’s the awnly livin’ sawl what understands me,” he said slowly.

“And I—­I too, Will!” cried Phoebe.  “Ess fay.  I’ll call you a holy angel if you please, an’ God knaws theer ’s not an angel in heaven I’d have stead of ’e.”

“I ban’t no angel,” said Will gravely, “and never set up for no such thing; but I’ve thought a lot ’bout the world in general, and I’m purty wise for a home-stayin’ chap, come to think on it; and it’s borne in ’pon me of late days that the married state ’s a gude wan, and the sooner the better.”

“But a leap in the dark even for the wisest, Will?”

“So’s every other step us takes for that matter.  Look at them grasshoppers.  Off they goes to glory and doan’t knaw no more ’n the dead wheer they’ll fetch up.  I’ve seed ’em by the river jump slap in the water, almost on to a trout’s back.  So us hops along and caan’t say what’s comin’ next.  We ’m built to see just beyond our awn nose-ends and no further.  That’s philosophy.”

“Ban’t comfortin’ if ’t is,” said Phoebe.

“Whether or no, I’ll see your faither ’fore night and have a plain answer.  I’m a straight, square man, so’s the miller.”

“You’ll speed poorly, I’m fearin’, but ’t is a honest thing; and I’ll tell faither you ’m all the world to me.  He doan’t seem to knaw what it is for a gal to be nineteen year old somehow.”

Solemnly Will rose, almost overweighted with the consciousness of what lay before him.

“We’ll go home-along now.  Doan’t ’e tell him I’m coming.  I’ll take him unbeknawnst.  And you keep out the way till I be gone again.”

“Does your mother knaw, Will?”

“Ess, she an’ Chris both knaw I be gwaine to have it out this night.  Mother sez I be right, but that Miller will send me packing wi’ a flea in my ear; Chris sez I be wrong to ax yet awhile.”

“You can see why that is; ’she ’s got to wait herself,” said Phoebe, rather spitefully.

“Waitin’ ’s well enough when it caan’t be helped.  But in my case, as a man of assured work and position in the plaace, I doan’t hold it needful no more.”

Together the young couple marched down over the meadows, gained the side of the river, and followed its windings to the west.  Through a dip in the woods presently peeped the ancient stannary town of Chagford, from the summit of its own little eminence on the eastern confines of Dartmoor.  Both Will and Phoebe dwelt within the parish, but some distance from the place itself.  She lived at Monks Barton, a farm and mill beside the stream; he shared an adjacent cottage with his mother and sister.  Only a bend of the river separated the dwellings of the lovers—­where Rushford Bridge spanned the Teign and beech and fir rose above it.