In the next hour, she caught six perch of various sizes, four roach, and a gudgeon.  Perigal caught nothing, a fact that caused Mavis to sympathise with his bad luck.

“Next time you’ll do all the catching,” she said.

“You mean you’ll fish with me again?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Really, with me?”

“I like fish for breakfast,” she said, as she turned from the ardour of his glance.

Presently, when they had “jacked up,” as he called it, and walked together across the meadows in the direction of the town, she said little; she replied to his questions in monosyllables.  She was wondering at and a little afraid of the accentuated feeling of helplessness in his presence which had taken possession of her.  It was as if she had no mind of her own, but must submit her will to the wishes of the man at her side.  They paused at the entrance to the churchyard, where he asked: 

“And what have you been doing all this time?”

She told him of her visit to the Trivetts.

His face clouded as he said: 

“Fancy you hobnobbing with those common people!”

“But I like them—­the Trivetts, I mean.  Whoever I knew, I should go and see them if I liked them,” she declared, her old spirit asserting itself.

He looked at her in surprise, to say: 

“I like to see you angry; you look awfully fine when that light comes into your eyes.”

“And I don’t like you at all when you say I shouldn’t know homely, kindly people like the Trivetts.”

“May I conclude, apart from that, you like me?” he asked.  “Answer me; answer me!”

“I don’t dislike you,” she replied helplessly.

“That’s something to go on with.  But if I’d known you were going to throw yourself away on farmers, I’d have hung after you myself.  Even I am better than that.”

“Thanks.  I can do without your assistance,” she remarked.

“You think I didn’t come near you all this time because I didn’t care?”

“I don’t think I thought at all about it.”

“If you didn’t, I did.  I was longing, I dare not say how much, to see you again.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked.

“For once in my life, I’ve tried to go straight.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the sort of girl to get into a man’s blood; to make him mad, reckless, head over ears—­”

“Hadn’t we better go on?” she asked.

“Why—­why?”

She had not thought him capable of such earnestness.

“Because I wish it, and because this churchyard is enough to give one the blues.”

“I love it, now I’m talking to you.”

“Love it?” she echoed.

“First of all, you in your youth, and—­and your attractiveness—­are such a contrast to everything about us.  It emphasises you and—­and—­ it tells me to snatch all the happiness one can, before the very little while when we are as they.”