Phoebe Lenine, being a woman of some eight years old, shook the remains of the corn off her small blue lap with no signs of haste or discomposure, and, turning her back, called to a hidden corner of the yard.

“Faether!  Faether!  Passon’s come to see you!”

“How d’you know I haven’t called to see you, Miss Phoebe?” asked Boase, stepping into the passage.  She ran and seized him by the knees, flinging back her head so that her dark curls hung away from her softly-rounded face.  Her pouting mouth, always slightly open to show a hint of two little front teeth, laughed up at him, her dove’s eyes narrowed with her mirth.  Of Ishmael she took no more notice than if he had not been there, and he leant against the doorpost, scraping the earth with the toe of his hard little boot, his thumbs stuck in his belt.

“I be gwain to help cry the Neck over to Cloom!” announced Phoebe—­to the Parson and at Ishmael—­“and I be gwain to stay to th’ supper, and maybe I’ll dance wi’ a chap.  There’s Maister Jacka’s John-Willy would be proud to dance wi’ I!”

“So you’re fond of dancing, Phoebe?” asked the Parson.

“Sure ‘nough!  Dancen’ and singen’—­that’s life, that is.  Ef you can’t dance and sing I don’t see no good in liven’!  I don’t hold wi’ chaps who think of nawthen but wanten’ to be saved.  Time ’nough for that when gettin’ on for thirty!”

Ishmael winced at the hit, and the Parson laughed as he tied two of Phoebe’s ringlets into a bow under her chin.

“There are ways and ways of remembering the Creator in the days of your youth, Phoebe,” he said, “and one of them’s by dancing and singing—­if it’s with the right kind of chap.  I don’t think much of Jacka’s John-Willy; if you really want to be a great lady to-night you must get Ishmael to dance with you.  He’s going to be master of the feast, and perhaps if you ask him very nicely he’ll dance with you just once.”

This view of Ishmael as a person of importance was a new one to Phoebe, and she looked at him as though appraising him afresh.

“I don’t ask no chaps to dance wi’ I,” she announced loftily.  “Faether’s just comen’ to see you, Da Boase.”

She wriggled her sleek little otter-like head under his arm and slipped past him as she spoke.  Then: 

“Like to see the pigs?” she asked Ishmael carelessly.  “Da ringed ’en the marnen’.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” answered Ishmael, still scraping the gravel.

“Naden’t come ef ’ee don’t want to more’n thet!” retorted Phoebe, “and I could have shown ’ee where the old pig was killed.  There’s been a dark place on the stones ever since.  I saw it killed, I did, Ishmael Ruan.  I saw Da stick in the knife and the blood come all out, I ded!”

“So ’a ded, my ’andsome, so ’a ded!” applauded the miller, whose big form, powdery white, had appeared in the passage.