“Lor’, yes, ’Melia be off to the ’op-pickin’ again, sure enough,” grumbled a shrivelled and careworn little woman, who stood bent over an ironing-board just inside of a poor cottage on the brow of the hill. “Though, as I says to ’er, it’d be more worth my while for ye to stay at ’ome to-day and help me with this washin’, for it be more than one pair of ’ands can do to get all them shirts ready to go ’ome to the Priory to-night.”

“Why, ye ought to make that girl mind ye better, Mrs. Shaw, indeed ye ought,” declared the neighbour to whom this feeble complaint was addressed, and who stood poised on the threshold, twisting the pinch of starch that she had come to borrow in a paper, and throwing back her advice as she prepared to descend the steps into the road.

“Well, it don’t seem much use talkin’ to girls now-a-days,” moaned the mother helplessly. “They be all so mighty sure they know all about it. In my time it weren’t considered respectable for a young woman to go ’op-pickin’ all by ’erself like that; but, Lor’, things be all changed since I were young.”

“Maybe they ain’t so much changed as you think for, ’Liza Shaw,” nodded the neighbour—Martha Jones by name—sententiously. “There be some as say she be too much with the men, be your daughter; there be some as says as she be too fond o’ feathers and fashions and sick-like; and there be some as can chaff her about them dark lanes of a summer night.”

Mrs. Shaw flushed all over her poor wrinkled, sallow face as she put down one iron and took up another with a trembling hand, holding it to her cheek to test the heat.

“I should like to know who they can be, then,” said she with a note of righteous indignation in her quivering voice. “I never did ’old with them dark lanes, and ’Melia knows it; but when it comes to be’aving—well, there, ’Melia may be a bit light-’earted—I don’t say she bain’t—but she comes o’ respectable folk, and none can say contrairy to that.”

“Oh, Lor’ bless you, yes; no offence, I’m sure,” declared Martha Jones, retreating. “Girls will be girls, so I say. But I’d make her do a bit at them shirts to-night. ’Tis but fair to you.”

She nodded in an offhand, friendly way as she shambled down the rough brick steps to the road—the matter dismissed from her mind. But the poor widow drew many a laboured sigh from her aching breast as the iron passed quickly or slowly over the white linen; and when she stepped to the threshold now and then to look to the children playing in the road there was more than the usual fret of work unfinished and worry to come on her weary face, and Martha Jones’s friendly advice was the cause.

Meanwhile, in the sun-steeped hop-gardens down the hill towards the sea, ’Melia was taking her fill of health and fun.

It was very hot; beyond the waste of yellow turf—relieved by the richer brown of nodding grasses at seedtime, and by the green of rushes along the sides of brackish dykes, all of which went to form the mellow plain between the village on the hill and the ocean in the distance—blue waves rippled in the sunlight and the shallow water farther out was streaked with purple shadows till a yellow dash in the distance told of scarce covered sands.

She was a tall, powerful, dark girl, in every particular opposite to the fragile woman over the ironing-board. Some strain of gipsy blood in the unknown past must have bred those deep, dark eyes and kindled the quick flash that pride, anger, or pleasure would stir in their brown softness. And in her gait, too, and in her movements there was a fulness and a freedom foreign to the less well-developed persons of most of her companions. Was it any wonder that the lads liked her, that her merry spirit and her hearty ways kept them good-tempered and civil, when a gloomy face would sour the best of them—that ’Melia Shaw was a favourite with every male creature, and not quite so popular with her own sex?

But for that, truth to tell, she seemed to care but little. She was hail-fellow-well-met with everybody—girl and boy alike; but if anybody presumed to “cheek” her, or to interfere with what she considered it right and proper to do, that person repented of his or her indiscretion in a very short space of time.

And to-day some one had ventured to interfere with ’Melia, and was “catching it hot” in return. The imprudent person was a hard-featured woman of about forty, who was cordially hated in the field because she never looked up from her work, but picked more poles in an hour than anybody else to right or left of her.

“Ye didn’t get much out o’ the lads yerself seemingly when you was young, Miss Crutch,” the girl was retorting with a merry toss of her black head. “Maybe we young ’uns know a way worth two o’ that now-a-days.”

And there was a roar of laughter in the field at her words, for Miss Crutch was a single woman.

“Yer pore mother wouldn’t be pleased to ’ear ye speak so, anyway,” remarked the spinster severely.

“You leave my mother alone,” retorted ’Melia, with one of those quick flashes from her bright eyes. “She knowed her way about, anyway.”

Another laugh around, but Miss Crutch said sourly, “Ay, pore soul, much of a way she cut out for herself! A widder in the prime o’ life wi’ a pack of ungrateful children to moil and slave for. No wonder she be broke and old afore her time.”

“Who says as they be ungrateful?” said ’Melia.

“Them as sees the oldest on ’em racin’ round to please ’erself instead of ’elpin’ her,” retorted the old maid.

“Well, she don’t want your ’elp to mind ’em anyway,” giggled the girl, turning to empty her pocketful of hops into the bin and meeting as she did so the grave eyes of a thick-set man of quiet aspect who was lifting fresh poles for the pickers.

She lowered her own that were not in the habit of falling before any one’s gaze, and her laugh was less confident as she added: “There’s earnin’ as well as elpin’, ye see.”

“Oh, I say, ’ow much o’ your earnin’s gone ’ome, eh, ’Melia?” sneered a fat girl hard by; but her mouth was stopped by a young fellow who brushed past her quickly, and, stooping over ’Melia, pulled a hop-pole out of the ground for her that was trying even her strength, and laid it across for her ready to pick. The elder man, who was going on steadily with his own work, smiled a little, and the girl who had spoken cried out, “Lor! it ain’t every one of us gets that done for us!”

’Melia looked a little conscious as she said, "Ye ’adn’t no call to do it, thank ye, Mr. Farr. Mr. Wilkins ’ere"—nodding towards the other man—“lays ’em ready for us.”

But she looked pleased as any other girl would have looked, and blushed a bit under her brown skin at something the fellow said to her in an undertone. The girls around sniggered and whispered together, but the next minute ’Melia threw her jokes and laughter around her in just the same wholesale and indiscriminate manner as usual, and the lads took heart of grace again and gathered round her—each confident that he could oust the stranger from her favour—and she was, as always, the centre of life and fun and banter. Only he whom she had called Mr. Wilkins held aloof, and went on steadily with his work without paying her any attention, without even laying the poles as near to her hand as he did to that of many another girl, and she—strange to say—never flung him even one of her lightly casual words, never appealed to him for his opinion, as she laughingly did to so many others.

“A good ’usband?” she was saying now with her merriest manner. “Well, now, I wonder what sort that’d be? Some tell ye one thing and some another, till ye don’t know what to believe, ’pon my word ye don’t. ’Ere be Johnnie says he’ll give me every blessed thing I can want; but, Lor’ bless me, ’ow can I tell what I shall want? A proper man ’d find out for ye, and give it ye into the bargain!”

The laugh went round louder than ever at this, and Johnnie declared he would find out fast enough; but he was told that as he had never made a good shot at her tastes yet she wasn’t likely to have any confidence in him for the future, and Johnnie, crestfallen, fell into the rear.

“Nay,” continued she, “there be some as’ll tell ye a woman be happiest when the man leads her a devil’s life; but there, I say it be according to taste again, and ’ow am I to know till I’ve tried? No, no, there be many a lad’s good for a day’s larking that’d never do to settle down with! So ye may all take it I mean to lark around a bit more yet awhile, and there be no tellin’ at all who I shall take in the end.”

“I wouldn’t wait too long, ’Melia. Ye mightn’t get asked so often as you might think for,” sneered the fat girl again; and ’Melia—ready, as usual—said that of course there was that danger to fear, but that she would take her chance all the same. And at that the lads laughed so vexatiously loud that the girls were vexed and bit their lips. By all of which it is to be surmised that, fond as ’Melia was of frolic and flattery, she had never even given the smallest portion of herself away, thus far, and, as her poor mother had proudly said of her, was no more than a bit light-hearted. Only to-day, for the first time, she had not been quite honest with herself, and if she had chosen to confess it, did know who she would take in the end—provided he asked her!

But there was the rub. He had not yet asked her. There had been larking enough, but nothing serious; and though you might possibly know how far you dared go with a lad of your own village whom you had known all your life, you did not feel quite so sure with a London chap, for the ways of London chaps were cruel and uncertain, and everybody said you must needs beware of them if you did not want to be led astray; and, though ’Melia wanted as much fun as she could get, she had no intention of being led astray.

So, if the truth were known, ’Melia was rather cross with herself than otherwise that it should just happen to be this London chap who had made her feel something that she had never somehow felt for any lad before. She didn’t recognize it to herself as love, and she had scorned to acknowledge it at first, but she knew very well now in the depths of her heart that it was stronger than her will, and that she would take that Mr. Farr fast enough if he were to ask her. What was it in him that was making a fool of her? There was many a better-looking man among her own acquaintance, and he had not even any of the dash that one was wont to expect in one bred in the great world; while as for his condition in life, it was absolutely dark to her, and she had always supposed she would not sell her universally acknowledged charms but to a high bidder.

So ’Melia was ashamed of herself when—as the hoppers wandered up the hill again that day at the sunsetting—she found herself loitering behind with the chap from London, and actually consenting to a tryst that very night under the lea of the down beneath the windmill—a moonlight tryst with a stranger, a thing that she had never done in her life before—gadabout as she too truly was, though not in the sense in which the neighbours hinted it. Yes, ’Melia was ashamed of herself, but she was going to do it all the same! So, of course, she was none the better pleased when Mr. Wilkins—meeting her on the meadow’s brow after she had parted from her new swain—said, speaking to her for the first time that day, “’Melia Shaw, there’s Miss Crutch waitin’ for ye round by the oast-house. She’s got a word to say to ye afore ye goes home.”

He spoke very seriously, looking her straight in the eyes as he had done once before that day in the hop-field. There was nothing to take offence at either in the words or the look; yet ’Melia fired up. Her conscience was sore, and it did her good to fly out at somebody, and so she made sure that the “word” that was going to be said was a word of warning about that which she knew she was doing amiss.

“I haven’t got nothing to say to Miss Crutch,” cried she quickly. “She be a nasty old backbitin’ crosspatch, and I ain’t a-goin’ to take nothin’ from ’er.”

Still the man looked at her quietly.

“Do you know what ’tis she ’ave got to say to ye?” asked he.

“I can make a good guess at it,” said she, with a toss of her head and a short laugh. “Miss Crutch never got no courtin’ ’erself, and she don’t like them as do.”

“There be courtin’ and courtin’,” began Wilkins in a low voice, “and there’s a time for everythin’ ...” but she interrupted him passionately.

“There be folks as thinks a girl must needs be a born fool if she thinks fit to take her own way,” cried she fiercely, but there was a quiver as of tears in her voice. “But, Lor’ bless me, it be yourself ye’ve got to choose for, and ye must choose your own—come what may.”

“Ay, that may be,” echoed the man, and she was far too preoccupied to note the wistful way in which he said it. “But young maids can’t allers be ’spected to know all the ways o’ this wicked world. We’ve knowed ye a little ’un, ye see, and we don’t want ye to come to no ’arm.”

“’Arm!” exclaimed ’Melia impetuously, firing up at once; but he stopped her.

“Well, anyways,” he said quietly, “ye won’t be thinkin’ o’ courtin’ just now? ’Tain’t about that as Miss Crutch was wantin’ to speak with ye.”

“What then?” answered she moodily, as was not her wont.

“Maybe ye had best go up and see,” said he. But as she still stood still, with ruffled brow, uneasily twisting a piece of grass round her fingers, and as though meditating further speech, he added gently, “Yer mother be sick.”

The change was instantaneous. She did not say a word, but she flashed a quick, frightened look at him, and turned on her heel and fled. He looked after her pitifully as her tall figure flitted down the lane beside the wind-twisted pine-trees, behind whose red trunks the sun was setting in a sea of crimson beyond the purple downs. He watched to see if she would look for Miss Crutch, but she passed the oast-house by on her right, and ran straight on down the lane till she came to the turning that led to her home.

The moonlight fell into that lane the same night as the clock of the old Abbey struck its nine wavering strokes, fell so full upon it that the shadow of the pines lay hard and black upon its whiteness, and that the figure of a man sauntering leisurely along between its low stone walls was conspicuous as in broad daylight. He had come up from the camp in the marsh-land below, where the fires of those “hoppers” who were not villagers burned brightly in the still night; he left the oast-houses on his left, and before he came to the farm on the right he vaulted the low paling and made off across the down to the windmill. He was not an inhabitant or he would have known that that was not the shortest way from the plain to his destination. And there—on the slopes under the great spreading arms of the mill, with the dykes wandering rippleless across the plain below, like winding streams of molten metal in the moonlight—this man waited awhile patiently. He was not used to waiting, and the scene before him engrossed him but little, so that when the ashes of his pipe had burned themselves out and the moon was riding high in the heavens, he grew weary of the tryst, and slowly but surely incensed against the girl who had broken it. He was no beauty—many even said that he was an ugly chap—but he knew that he always got his way with women, and not infrequently even with men, and he never troubled himself to wonder why, and would have been very much surprised if he had been told that it was because folk were in a certain sense afraid of him—afraid not of his strength, but of his selfishness—of the selfishness that always managed to take that for which it had no intention of paying.

It was the first time he remembered being baulked of what he had intended to get, and his fury grew as the minutes sped past. He ground out a fierce oath from between the white teeth that were the most conspicuous thing in his face, and turned back across the down. The “public” lay but a little way down the road to the village. He could soon forget ’Melia Shaw, and she should repent bitterly of her folly.

Was ’Melia repenting already, and was it really of her folly that she was repenting—of the folly of her wild and misguided craving? Or was she mourning the broken tryst that it was now too late to keep?

Who can tell? Anyway, a duty had fallen across her path, so plain and strong that she saw nothing else for the moment; for on the bed in the corner of the little cottage on the brow of the hill Widow Shaw lay motionless, speechless—struck down in the midst of her work—the soul only alive still, and eager as it looked forth, piteous and beseeching, from the weary grey eyes.

“It be them shirts she be frettin’ over,” said the neighbour, Martha Jones, standing at the foot of the bed as ’Melia rushed in, white and scared. “Ye didn’t ought to have left her to do it all. But it be jest like what ye be always after.”

But Miss Crutch in the doorway, throwing a scornful glance at the girl, tossed her head.

“Shirts,” echoed she with a laugh, “shirts, indeed! A pore mother ’ave got somethin’ wuss nor shirts to think about when she knows her daughter’s a-carryin’ on with good-for-nothing chaps as ’aven’t the fear o’ God so much as in their backbone. No wonder the Lord ’ave stricken ’er!”

“Hush, now, do there!” cried a kindlier woman who had risen from beside the bed, “ye’ll drive the poor lass crazy. The doctor says as she’ll get over it this time, dear,” added she to ’Melia, “but she ’ave got to be kep’ quiet, and he’ll call again presently.”

The girl had thrown herself on the bed, the younger children, who were standing huddled together in a corner, clinging on to her skirts. At the words she leapt to her feet.

“To be kep’ quiet!” echoed she fiercely. “Then clear out o’ ’ere all of yer, if you please. I’ll see as she be kep’ quiet.”

The women quailed before her and made for the door, grumbling; all but she who had spoken last, on whose arm ’Melia laid a detaining hand. Then she threw herself once more on the bed.

“Lord! to think they must needs prate like that just now!” moaned she. “And there ain’t no truth in it neither. No, mother, no, I ain’t a-carryin’ on with no chap, I ain’t. And I’m sorry I didn’t do the shirts for ye, I am. But they’ll all go ’ome to-night, same as if you was well—I swear they will, mother! Oh, Lord! she won’t speak to me—not a word! Whatever is it? Whatever shall I do?”

No, the mother could not speak, but the tired eyes grew quiet and drooped presently in sleep, and there were tears in the black eyes of the daughter as she gazed on her; and the neighbour, busying herself now about the supper and the children, cried as she answered.

“She can’t speak to ye, ’Melia,” said she. “She’s ’ad a stroke. But she won’t die this time. They often lives years arter the first, only they can’t never do no work again. Ye’ll ’ave to work for the lot. It’s ’ard on ye, dear, but ye’ve ’ad yer turn.”

And as she sat through the silent night, watching tenderly over the mother whom she had neglected, and who had so bravely toiled for her, and so proudly defended her, ’Melia looked her future quietly in the face.

Yes; she would have to work for the lot. There would be no more larking. Would there be no more love-making either? Would she never find that out which she had not even desired to know till of late, which she had been so nearly finding out to-night? The sound, common-sense of her present nature told her that it was more than likely. How many men would care to saddle themselves with a bed-ridden mother and a parcel of brats?

Was ’Melia repenting as he had said she should repent—repenting that broken tryst that she knew in her heart she should never, never keep? All her life she had always had what she wanted. But she had never wanted anything as she wanted the love of this one man, who was a stranger to her, and who was even now tramping away from her, miles away already along the dusty road that led to the nearest town.

Every year when the harvest moon drew near the hoppers gathered into the camp beneath the hill, and made their fires beside the straw huts in the hollow, and every year the picking went on busily in the fields; but there were some folk who said that there never was such a merry “hopping” as there had been that year—for ’Melia never got time to go back to it.

She worked hard to keep the laundry work together, and she did it, though there were folk enough that said she would never succeed. One by one the children grew up, and were put to service or to a trade, and at last the mother was laid to rest in the graveyard, and ’Melia was left with only one of her brood at her heels.

It had been a hard fight, and save for one hand that had often been stretched out for her in the dark and unknown to herself—she had fought it unaided.

There had been no time, as she had guessed, for larking, or trysting, or love-making. And it was in a very quiet spirit that one autumn Sabbath, when the hops were all in, ’Melia Shaw walked to church with a middle-aged man named Bill Wilkins, and said a gentle and quite untremulous “Yes” to the old question that is for ever being asked and answered in so many and varied moods.