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And if Rosa here wasn't the great, strong lass she is, I don't know how her old uncle'd manage; and he turned to the girl with a proud, tremulous smile. 'Will ye tak my arm a bit, Mr. Blencarn? Miss Rosa'll be tired, likely, Anthony asked. 'Nay, Mr. Garstin, but I can manage nicely, the girl interrupted sharply. Anthony looked up at her as she spoke.
Anthony, his eyes bent on the ground, sauntered beside him, clumsily kicking at the cobbles that lay in his path. When they reached the vicarage gate, the old man asked him to come inside. 'Not jest now, thank ye, Mr. Blencarn. I've that lot o' lambs t' see to before dinner. It's a grand marnin', this, he added, inconsequently. 'Uncle's bought a nice lot o' Leghorns, Tuesday, Rosa remarked.
She wore a straw hat, trimmed with crimson velvet, and a black, fur-edged cape, that seemed to set off mightily the fine whiteness of her neck. Her large, dark eyes were fixed upon him. He shifted his feet uneasily, and dropped his glance. She linked her uncle's arm in hers, and the three moved slowly forward. Old Mr. Blencarn walked with difficulty, pausing at intervals for breath.
'T' hoose be mine, t' Lord be praised, she continued in a loud, hard voice, 'an' as long as he spare me, Tony, I'll na see Rosa Blencarn set foot inside it. Anthony scowled, without replying, and drew his chair to the hearth. His mother bustled about the room behind him. After a while she asked: 'Did ye pen t' lambs in t' back field? 'Na, they're in Hullam bottom, he answered curtly.
She caught his sleeve, and, through her spectacles, suspiciously scrutinized his face. 'Ye did na meet wi' Rosa Blencarn? 'Nay, she was in church, hymn-playin', wi' Luke Stock hangin' roond door, he retorted bitterly, rebuffing her with rough impatience. She moved away, nodding sententiously to herself.
He was of stubborn fibre, however, toughened by long habit of a bleak, unruly climate; he revolved the matter in his mind deliberately, and when, at last, after much plodding thought, it dawned upon him that she resented his acquaintance with Rosa Blencarn, he accepted the solution with an unflinching phlegm, and merely shifted his attitude towards the girl, calculating each day the likelihood of his meeting her, and making, in her presence, persistent efforts to break down, once for all, the barrier of his own timidity.
Blencarn concluded his husky sermon. The scanty congregation, who had been sitting, stolidly immobile in their stiff, Sunday clothes, shuffled to their feet, and the pewful of school children, in clamorous chorus, intoned the final hymn. Anthony stood near the organ, absently contemplating, while the rude melody resounded through the church, Rosa's deft manipulation of the key-board.
He went home, washed, shaved, put on his Sunday coat; and, avoiding the kitchen, where his mother sat knitting by the fireside, strode up to the vicarage. It was Rosa who opened the door to him. On recognizing him she started, and he followed her into the dining-room. He seated himself, and began, brusquely: 'I've coom, Miss Rosa, t' speak t' Mr. Blencarn.
It's been a wretched sort of childhood for her a wretched sort of childhood. Ye'll take care of her, Anthony, will ye not? ... Nay, but I could not hev wished for a better man for her, and there's my hand on 't. 'Thank ee, Mr. Blencarn, thank ee, Anthony answered huskily, gripping the old man's hand. And he started off down the lane homewards. His heart was full of a strange, rugged exaltation.
He and Henry Sisson stacked the hay in the yard behind the house; there was no further mention made of Rosa Blencarn; but all day long Anthony, as he knelt thatching the rick, brooded over the strange sweetness of her face, and on the fell-top, while he tramped after the ewes over the dry, crackling heather, and as he jogged along the narrow, rickety road, driving his cartload of lambs into the auction mart.
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