“He’s too late, thank God!”

“Ess, fay!  An’ if he’d comed afore ’e, Clem, he’d been tu early.  Theer’s awnly wan man in the gert world for me.”

“My gypsy!”

“But I didn’t mean that.  He wouldn’t look at me, not even if I was a free woman.  ’T was of you I thought when I talked to Mr. Grimbal.  He’m well-to-do, and be seekin’ a house in the higher quarter under Middledown.  You an’ him have the same fancy for the auld stones.  So you might grow into friends—­eh, Clem?  Couldn’t it so fall out?  He might serve to help—­eh?  You ‘m two-and-thirty year auld next February, an’ it do look as though they silly bees ban’t gwaine to put money enough in the bank to spell a weddin’ for us this thirty year to come.  Theer’s awnly your aunt, Widow Coomstock, as you can look to for a penny, and that tu doubtful to count on.”

“Don’t name her, Chris. Good Lord! poor drunken old thing, with that crowd of hungry relations waiting like vultures round a dying camel!  Never think of her.  Money she has, but I sha’n’t see the colour of it, and I don’t want to.”

“Well, let that bide.  Martin Grimbal’s the man in my thought.”

“What can I do there?”

“Doan’t knaw, ’zactly; but things might fall out if he got to like you, being a bookish sort of man.  Anyway, he’s very willing to be friends, for that he told me.  Doan’t bear yourself like Lucifer afore him; but take the first chance to let him knaw your fortune’s in need of mendin’.”

“You say that!  D’ you think self-respect is dead in me?” he asked, half angry.

There was no visible life about them, so she put her arms round him.

“I ax for love of ‘e, dearie, an’ for want of ’e.  Do ‘e think waitin’ ’s sweeter for me than for you?”

Then he calmed down again, sighed, returned the caress, touched her, and stroked her breast and shoulder with sudden earthly light in his great eyes.

“It ’s hard to wait.”

“That’s why I say doan’t lose chances that may mean a weddin’ for us, Clem.  Theer ’s so much hid in ’e, if awnly the way to bring it out could be found.”

“A mine that won’t pay working,” he said bitterly, the passion fading out of eyes and voice.  “I know there ’s something hidden; I feel there ’s a twist of brain that ought to rise above keeping bees and take me higher than honey-combs.  Yet look at hard truth.  The clods round me get enough by their sweat to keep wives and feed children.  I’m only a penniless, backboneless, hand-to-mouth wretch, living on the work of laborious insects.”

“If it ban’t your awn fault, then whose be it, Clem?”

“The fault of Chance—­to pack my build of brains into the skull of a pauper.  This poor, unfinished abortion of a head-piece of mine only dreams dreams that it cannot even set on paper for others to see.”

“You’ve given up trying whether it can or not, seemin’ly.  I never hear tell of no verses now.”