The Woodlanders

The back parts of the town were just now abounding with

apple-gatherings. They stood in the yards in carts, baskets, and loose

heaps; and the blue, stagnant air of autumn which hung over everything

was heavy with a sweet cidery smell. Cakes of pomace lay against the

walls in the yellow sun, where they were drying to be used as fuel.

Yet it was not the great make of the year as yet; before the standard

crop came in there accumulated, in abundant times like this, a large

superfluity of early apples, and windfalls from the trees of later

harvest, which would not keep long. Thus, in the baskets, and

quivering in the hopper of the mill, she saw specimens of mixed dates,

including the mellow countenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costards,

stubbards, ratheripes, and other well-known friends of her ravenous

youth.

Grace watched the head-man with interest. The slightest sigh escaped

her. Perhaps she thought of the day--not so far distant--when that

friend of her childhood had met her by her father's arrangement in this

same town, warm with hope, though diffident, and trusting in a promise

rather implied than given. Or she might have thought of days earlier

yet--days of childhood--when her mouth was somewhat more ready to

receive a kiss from his than was his to bestow one. However, all that

was over. She had felt superior to him then, and she felt superior to

him now.

She wondered why he never looked towards her open window. She did not

know that in the slight commotion caused by their arrival at the inn

that afternoon Winterborne had caught sight of her through the archway,

had turned red, and was continuing his work with more concentrated

attention on the very account of his discovery. Robert Creedle, too,

who travelled with Giles, had been incidentally informed by the hostler

that Dr. Fitzpiers and his young wife were in the hotel, after which

news Creedle kept shaking his head and saying to himself, "Ah!" very

audibly, between his thrusts at the screw of the cider-press.

"Why the deuce do you sigh like that, Robert?" asked Winterborne, at

last.

"Ah, maister--'tis my thoughts--'tis my thoughts!...Yes, ye've lost a

hundred load o' timber well seasoned; ye've lost five hundred pound in

good money; ye've lost the stone-windered house that's big enough to

hold a dozen families; ye've lost your share of half a dozen good

wagons and their horses--all lost!--through your letting slip she that

was once yer own!"

"Good God, Creedle, you'll drive me mad!" said Giles, sternly. "Don't

speak of that any more!"