“Here, where be goin’ to?” called out a voice behind him.

Without stopping Adam turned his head.  “Oh, Poll, is that you?” he said.

“Iss.”

“Have ye seen Eve pass this way?  I think she’d got Jerrem with her.”

“S’pose if I have?” said Poll, with whom Adam was no favorite:  “they doesn’t want you.  You stay where you be now.  I hates to see anybody a-spilin’ sport like that.”

With no very pleasant remark on the old woman Adam turned to go on.

“Awh, you may rin,” she cried, “but you woan’t catch up they.  They was bound for Nolan Point, and they’s past there long afore now.”

Then the two he had seen were they!  An indescribable feeling of jealousy stung Adam, and, giving way to his temper in a volley of oaths against old Poll, he turned back, repassed her and went toward home, while she stood enjoying his discomfiture, laughing heartily at it as she called out, “I hears ’ee.  Swear away!  I don’t mind yer cusses, not I. Better hear they than be deef.”

CHAPTER XXIX.

“Joan, you needn’t expect me till you see me”—­Joan turned quickly round to see Adam at the door, looking angry and determined—­“and you can tell Eve from me that as it seems all one to her whatever companion she has, I don’t see any need for forcing myself where I am told I should only be one in the way.”

“Adam—­” But the door was already slammed, and Joan again left in possession of the kitchen.—­“Now, there ’tis,” she said in a tone of vexation, “just as I thought:  a reg’lar piece o’ work made all out o’ nothin’.  Drabbit the maid!  If her’s got the man her wants, why can’t her study un a bit?  But somehow there’s bin a crooked stick lyin’ in her path all day to-day:  her’s nipped about somethin’, I’m positive sure o’ that; and they all just come home too, and everythin’, and now to be at daggers—­drawn with one ’nother!  ’Tis terrible, ’tis.”

Joan’s reflections, interrupted by the necessary attention which her cakes and pasties made upon her, lasted over some considerable time, and they had not yet come to an end when two of the principal objects of them presented themselves before her.  “Why, wherever have ’ee bin to?” she said peevishly.  “Whatever made ’ee stay away like this for—­actin’ so foolish, when you knaws, both of ’ee, what a poor temper Adam’s got if anythin’ goes contrary with un?”

Jerrem shrugged his shoulders, while Eve, at once assuming an injured air for such an unmerited attack, said, “Really, Joan, I don’t know what you mean.  Old Poll Potter has just been telling us that Adam came flying and fuming up her way, wanting to know if she’d seen us, and then, when she said where we’d gone to, he used the most dreadful language to her—­I’m sure I don’t know for what reason.  He chose to go out without me this morning.”

“But that was ’bout business,” said Joan.