A DROP OF GALL

WHAT did Mark Runham mean by his conduct?

He had left Zita to go after that fellow, Pip Beamish, and they were together on the embankment in close confabulation. The girl looked after them from between the red curtains, and could see Beamish gesticulating with his long arms. He was excited, he was speaking with vehemence, and at intervals Mark interrupted him.

Something that Mark had said seemed to have struck the orator with surprise. He dropped his arms and stood like a figure of wood. He let Mark lay his hand on his shoulder and draw him along, speaking rapidly into his ear.

What this meant was plain to Zita. The two men were rivals for Kainie of Red Wings. They had been disputing; Beamish hot and impatient, and unwilling to listen to the other. What was Kainie? A she-miller, as Zita put it, and ineligible as a wife to such as Runham. Among fen-farmers no one marries for mere love; money or land is the substance for which they crave. If a little love be sprinkled on the morsel, so much the better, but it is no essential—it is a condiment. Zita tossed her head. She was not a beggarly miller! She had the van and its contents, red curtains and gold tassels. She had money as well—the profits of fair-days at Swaffham, Huntingdon, Wisbeach, Cambridge, and Ely. She had a good deal of money in her box—none suspected how much. Of course her wealth would not compare with that of a fen-farmer, but it was enough to place her immeasurably above Kainie, and within reach of Mark if he chose to stoop a little—just a little.

Zita turned the head of Jewel homewards. Mark did not follow her to say farewell. He had given her no thanks for the jolting and jumbling in the conveyance to which she had treated him, though 'good as medicine to his insides.'

Zita was angry with the young man. She did not relish the thought that he came to see her one day and went to Kainie the next—nay, that he visited both in the same afternoon.

It was true that he had made no overtures to Zita—said nothing definite relative to his condition of heart; but he had kissed her, and would have done so again had she not warned him that it would give the horse an apoplectic fit. He had shown her plainly that he liked her company, and that he was unhappy if he did not see her daily.

His attentions had been noticed. Mrs. Tunkiss had commented on them, and the girl with St. Vitus' dance had made a joke about them.

His visit that day to Prickwillow would inevitably have been seen. The unusual sight of the van out on an airing must have attracted attention. And if the van had been seen, those who saw it were certain to speak of it to those who did not. That expedition would come to the ears of Drownlands.

Knowing what she did, Zita was able to account for the dislike Drownlands showed to the presence of Mark Runham. The sight of the young man was a sting to his conscience. He would be afraid lest Zita, in conversation with him, might let drop something about the events of the night on which Jake Runham died.

But Zita was woman enough to see that there was another reason why the master of Prickwillow eyed the young fellow with dislike. He was jealous of him. Zita perceived that Drownlands liked her, at the same time that he feared her. She could discern in the expression of his eye, read in his consideration for her comfort, decipher in the quiver of his lips when Mark's name was mentioned, that his regard for her was deep, and that his dislike of Mark was due to jealousy.

Zita was accustomed to admiration; she had received a good deal of it in her public life, and regarded it with contemptuous indifference; but the admiration she had met with in market and fair had been outspoken; this of Drownlands was covert. Hitherto she had accepted it from her vantage-ground—the platform of her own habitation; now she was at a disadvantage—the inmate of the house of the man who looked on her with admiration.

She turned her thoughts again in the direction of Mark. What were the ties binding him to Kainie, of which he spoke?

On consideration, she thought she could understand. Mark had fallen in love with the girl at the mill when in hobbledehoydom, and had stupidly plunged into an engagement. Boys are fools; and he was but just emerged from boyhood. His father's death had knocked the nonsense out of his head, and brought him to the consciousness that he had made a blunder. He was now a rich farmer; Kainie had nothing of her own but the clothes she stood up in. Moreover, he had since seen Zita, and had become sincerely attached to her. So long as he was tied to that miller-girl, he could not speak of his wishes and purposes to Zita. He was in a dilemma; he was an honourable fellow, and could not break his word to Kainie. Mark was laying the case before Pip Beamish, and was inviting Pip to take Kainie off his hands, and set him free to speak out to Zita.

'Well,' thought the girl, as she put up Jewel in his stable, 'we all do foolish things; some of us do wrong things at times in our life. I have done both in one—I sold a box of paste-cutters at one and nine that cost father two shillings. I've had that threepence as hot coppers on my soul ever since. Well! I hope Pip Beamish will take Kainie. He loves her, and he's suited to her—both are millers; one has nothing and the other nought—so they are fitted for a match. I'll help matters on, or try to do so. I'll see Kainie, and have a deal with her—she is but one of the general public after all. I daresay she likes Pip quite as much as Mark, and is doubting in her mind which to have. I know what I can throw in to turn the scale.'

Accordingly, when the van had been consigned to its shed and the curtains removed to her room, Zita knitted her fingers behind her back and surveyed her goods, moving from one group of wares to another.

After some consideration, she descended the stairs and prepared to leave the house.

Mrs. Tunkiss peered out of the kitchen as she heard her step, and said—

'Going to meet the master—be you?'

A malevolent smile was on her face.

'No, Mrs. Tunkiss. I do not know in which direction he has ridden.'

'You'd like to know, would you? You'd go and meet him, and he'd jump off his horse and walk alongside of you, and say soft things. Oh my! The master! Ki Drownlands say soft things!'

The woman burst into a cackling laugh.

'What do you mean?' asked Zita, reddening with anger at the insult implied in the woman's words.

'Oh, miss, I mean nothing to offend. But I'd like to know what the master will say to your carawaning about with Mark Runham—what the master will say to your receiving visits from young men in the poultry-house.'

'That is no concern of yours; and for the matter of that, I care nothing what he thinks.'

'Oh dear no! But folks can't carry on with two at once. Two strings to a bow may be all very well in some things. I don't mean to say that you shouldn't sow clover with your corn, and so have both a harvest of wheat and one of hay; but with us poor women that don't do. If it be a saying that we should have two strings to one bow, there is another, that there's many a slip between the cup and the lip.'

Zita pushed past the insolent woman.

Mrs. Tunkiss shouted after her, 'Strange goings on—so folks say. There's Mark Runham running after two girls, sweethearting both; and there's one girl—I names no names—running after two men, and I bet she catches neither.'

Then she slammed the kitchen door.