Читать книгу Captures онлайн

30 страница из 40

The schoolmistress was silent.

“Well,” she said at last, “it’s an unchristian state of mind.”

“Yu go to Steer, ma’am, an’ see whether he’ll be more Christian-like. He ’olds the plate out Sundays.”

This was precisely what the good lady did, more perhaps from curiosity than in proselytizing mood.

“What!” said Steer, who was installing a beehive; “when that God-darned feller put his son up to jilting my niece!”

“And you a Christian, Mr. Steer!”

“There’s a limit to that, ma’am,” said Steer dryly. “In my opinion, not even our Lord could have put up with that feller. Don’t you waste your breath trying to persuade me.”

“Dear me!” murmured the schoolmistress. “I don’t know which of you is worst.”

The only people, in fact, who did know were Steer and Bowden, whose convictions about each other increased as the spring came in with song and leaf and sunshine, and there was no son to attend to the sowing and the calving, and no niece to make the best butter in the parish.

Towards the end of May, on a ‘brave’ day, when the wind was lively in the ash-trees and the buttercups bright gold, the girl Pansy had her hour; and on the following morning Bowden received this letter from his son.