When the fateful Friday dawned, it found Jinny fast asleep, worn out after long listening to a wind that would soon be tossing a ship about. In those harsh hours she had felt it would be impossible to get up and go on her round in the morning. But no sooner were her eyes unsealed, than there sprang up in her mind the thought that, did she fail her customers to-day, gossip would at once connect her breakdown with Will’s departure. So far, she had reason to believe, Martha’s guess at their relations had not penetrated outside. But eyes were sharp and tongues sharper, and she must not be exposed to pity. Under this goad she sprang up instanter and did her hair carefully before the cracked mirror and dressed herself in her best and smartest. She would go around with gibe and laughter and fantasias on the horn, and whatever was consonant with celebrating the final retreat of the coach.

The morning was quiet after the blustrous night, but the year, like her fate, was at its dreariest moment—no colour in sky or garden, no hint of the Spring—and at breakfast a reaction overcame her. But this time her grandfather did not observe her depression: he was too full of the crime of ’Lijah, who—according to Martha—was putting his mother in the Chipstone poorhouse prior to installing his bride in Rosemary Villa. So garrulous was he this morning that Jinny—her mind morbidly possessed by a story of a miner who was found dead of starvation in the Bush with a bag of gold for his pillow—ceased to listen to his diatribes, retaining only an uneasy sense that he was twitching and jerking with the same excitement as when Martha had first come. “And Oi count ye’ll be doin’ the same with me one day,” she heard him say at last, for he was shaking her arm. “But Oi’d have ye know it’s my business, not yourn—Daniel Quarles, Carrier.”

Jinny wearily assured him that there was no danger of her ever marrying, and she felt vexed with Martha for coming and starting such agitated trains of thought in his aged brain. Possibly the foolish mother might even have broached to him her desire to rob him of his granddaughter.

“Ye ought to be glad Oi’ve give ye food and shelter and them fine clothes ye’ve titivated yourself with,” he went on, unsoothed, “bein’ as there ain’t enough in the business for myself. ’Tis a daily sacrifice, Jinny, and do ye don’t forgit it.”

The prompt arrival of Ravens made a break, but she had to cancel with thanks her request for his services with the cart, and then, when the old man was settled at his Bible, and her bonnet and shawl were on, she collapsed in the ante-room, sinking down on the chest in which she had hoarded Will’s provisions, and feeling her resolution oozing away with every tick of the Dutch clock. Impossible to whip up a pseudo-gaiety, to make the tour of all these inquisitive faces! And through the lassitude of her whole being pierced every now and then her grandfather’s voice, crying “Tush, you foolish woman!” She knew it was not meant for her, but for an imagined Martha whose texts he was confuting, but it sounded dismally apposite, and when once he declared “Wiser folks than you knowed it all afore you was born,” she bowed her head as before the human destiny.

When the clock struck nine, he came stalking in. “Why, Jinny! Ain’t to-day Friday?”

She raised a miserable face. “Yes, but I’m going to-morrow instead!”

“To-morrow be dangnationed!” he cried, upset. “Oi’ve, never missed my Friday yet.”

“But I don’t feel like going to-day.”

“That’ll never do, Jinny. Ye’ll ruin my business with your whimwhams and mulligrubs. And it don’t yarn enough as it is.”

“There’s no competition—it doesn’t matter now.”

“And is that your thanks to the Lord for drowndin’ Pharaoh and his chariot and hosses?”

But she put her head back in her hands. “Do let me be!” she snapped.

“Don’t ye feel well, Jinny?” he said, with a change of tone. “Have ye got shoots o’ pain in your brain-box?”

“I’m all right, but I don’t want to go to-day. I should only make muddles.”

“We don’t make muddles,” he said fiercely.

“Let me be. I can’t harness.”

“Well, then Oi’ll do it, dearie. You just set there—Oi’ll put the door a bit ajar and once you’re in the fresh air you’ll be all right.”

She heard him shuffle back into the living-room and thence into the kitchen as the shortest way to the stable, and then, almost immediately, she became aware of a little noise at the garden-gate. She was sitting opposite the clock, and through the slit at the doorway she beheld, to her amaze, a red-headed figure outside the gate, sitting on a box and mopping its brow as it gazed sentimentally at the cottage. Even in the wild leaping of her pulses, the grotesqueness of their both sitting gloomily on boxes—so near and yet so far—tickled her sense of humour. But as she sat on, smiling and fluttering, she saw him rise, cast a cautious look round, open the gate, and steal towards the living-room. In a bound she was within and waiting by the closed casement, and as his expected peep came, the lattice flew back in his face and her hysteric mockery rang out.

“I thought you’d never look on my face again!”

It was almost a greater surprise than when she had appeared with Methusalem walking the waters, for he had counted her just as surely set out on her Friday round as the sun itself, and his sentimental journey safe from misunderstanding (or was it understanding?).

“Oh, don’t cackle!” he snarled. “I might have guessed you’d try to catch me.”

She gulped down the sobs that were trying to strangle her speech. How glad she was that she had on her best frock! “I overslept myself!” she said gaily. “Gran’fer’s harnessing. I see you’ve brought your box! You’re just in time!”

“I haven’t brought my box!” he snapped.

“Do ye don’t tell me no fibs,” she parodied.

“I mean, it’s going from ‘The King of Prussia.’”

“Really? Well I’ll take it over the bridge for you.”

“Thank you! I’m taking it there myself.”

“This don’t seem the shortest cut to Long Bradmarsh,” she observed blandly.

He glowered. “Shows how easily I can carry it. I’m having a good-bye look at all the old places.”

But below this surface conversation they were holding one of their old silent duologues. Jinny’s heart was beating fast with happiness and triumph as her eyes told him he would never get away now, and he, hypnotized by that dancing light in them, dumbly acknowledged he was self-trapped. Yet how they were going to get out of their impasse, and how his pride was to be reconciled with their reconciliation, neither had the ghost of an idea. “I see,” she replied, as if accepting his explanation of his visit. “But as to this old place, I’m afraid Ravens has rather changed the look of it with his new thatch.”

He snorted at the name.

“But you’ll find it unchanged inside,” she added affably, “if you come in.”

“Don’t begin that again! You know I can’t.”

“Dear me! I had forgotten that old nonsense. Well, you can come nearer and peep in.” Her face shone at the window.

His face worked wildly with the struggle not to approach hers. “I did have a peep. Good-bye, I’ve got the coach to catch.”

“Well, the cart will be ready in a moment. Gran’fer is so slow harnessing. Hark! Nip’s getting impatient.”

He raised his hat. “Thank you, but I told you I was my own carrier.”

“Good-bye, then. Pity you came so out of your way.”

He turned, and his feet dragged themselves hopelessly gateward.

She waved her hand desperately through the casement.

“Good luck, Will! Hope you’ll strike plenty of nuggets!”

“Thank you, Jinny!” He opened the gate.

“You’ll let me know how you’re getting on.”

“If you like!” The gate clicked behind him. Her mother-wit leapt to stave off the moment beyond which all her frenzied questing for some solution would be waste.

“Oh dear me, Will! Where is my memory going? Put your box in the porch a moment, will you?”

“What for?”

“I’ve got a few little things for the voyage—I really forgot.”

“Oh, Jinny!” He came back through the gate. “But I don’t need to bring the box to the door. I’ll take the things from you through the window.”

“But I want to pack them in properly—I can’t on the road.”

“There’s nobody passing.”

“You never can tell. We don’t want Bundock——”

“But I’ll pack them in myself.”

“I’d never trust a man—in fact I expect I’ll have to repack all the rest. Look at Mr. Flippance.”

But still he hung back. “There’s lots of room.”

“I know. Like a sensible man you’re getting your outfit in London. Bring it along. Or shall I lend you a hand?”

“No! No!” He hurriedly shouldered the huge box and Jinny heard its contents shifting like a withered kernel in a nutshell. It was the same American trunk with the overarching lid, and as he swaggered up the garden with it, it seemed to her as if time had rolled back to last Spring. But what comedies and tragedies had intervened between the two box-carryings, all sprung from the same obstinacy! And yet, she felt, she did not love him the less for his manly assertiveness: how sweet would be the surrender when their sparring was over and her will could be legitimately embraced in his, held like herself in those masterful, muscular arms.

Her mind was really in her Australian hut as he dumped the box at her feet. No, it would hardly do for a table, she thought, with that lid-curvature. Then she braced herself for a tricky tussle.

“Well, where’s the goods?” he said lightly.

“Don’t be so unbelieving—they’re in that spruce-hutch. Four months, you know, you’ve got to provide against.”

“I know,” he said glumly, unlocking his trunk and throwing up the lid violently. He would have liked to smash the springs. But the lid, lined with cheap striped cloth, stood up stiffly, refusing to give him a pretext for postponing his journey.

Jinny from her doorway gazed at the jumble in the great void.

“Shove it forward a bit,” she said carelessly, moving backwards within.

“What for?”

“Your end of the box is not under cover.”

“Why should it be?”

“It might rain and spoil your things—I’m sure I saw a drop.” She tugged at the handle and the trunk slid along the porch and some inches over the sill. Unostentatiously he pulled it back a bit, but she jerked it in again. “Do leave it where I can see the things,” she said with simulated fretfulness. “Good gracious!” She drew out the frock-coat he had sported for the Flippance wedding. “What’s this grandeur for?”

“Oh, for funerals and things like that!”

“In the Bush? And fancy packing it next to the blanket. It’s all over hairs. I’ll brush it and sell it for you—Ravens will be wanting one for the wedding.”

“What wedding?” he demanded fiercely.

“Mr. Skindle’s, of course. Weren’t you invited?”

He winced, and unrebuked she threw his wedding raiment over the provision-chest. “We’d best keep this on top,” she said, drawing out the blanket, “else you won’t get at it.”

“I expect you’ll be married by the time I’m back,” he remarked with aloofness.

“Not I. I’ll never marry now. I’ve seen too much of men’s foolishness.”

“Going to be an old maid?”

“If I live long enough!” Her vaunt of youth was dazzling.

“Well, I hope you won’t!” he said fervently.

“Won’t live? Oh, Will!”

“Won’t fade into that. You know what I mean. The sweetest rose must fade.”

“So will this muffler—fortunately. Haven’t you taken your dad’s ‘muckinger’ by mistake?”

“No, no—you leave that be.”

“What a let of Sunday collars!”

“Weekdays too I like a clean collar.”

“Ow, this onrighteous generation,” she said in Caleb’s voice, “all one to them, Sundays or no Sundays.” She pulled up his cloak.

“You leave that cloak be!” he said, laughing despite himself.

“But now your sling’s off, you don’t need it.”

“Yes, I do. Let it be, please.”

But she unrolled it mischievously and a packet of letters fell out—her letters about the great horn.

“Well, didn’t I say men were silly!” she cried. “Fancy taking that to Australia.” And she made as if to hurl them towards the living-room fire.

“Give ’em to me!” He reached for them angrily, and that gave her an idea.

“But they’re mine!” Standing at the end of the box, which made a barrier between them, she held them mockingly just beyond his reach. He came forward, then perceiving one foot was right across the forbidden sill, he jerked himself back violently. Then balancing himself well on his soles, with a sudden swoop he curved his body forward to the utmost. It only resulted in his nearly falling athwart the open box. He recovered his balance and the perpendicular with some difficulty and no dignity.

“Take care!” she cried in almost hysterical gaiety. “You nearly crossed that time.”

“You give me my property!” he cried furiously.

“They’re as much mine as yours.”

“Not by law. You’ve no legal right to detain my property.”

“And who’s detaining it? You’ve only got to come and take it!”

His anger was enhanced by the sounds of Daniel Quarles returning with the cart, a carolling, lumbering, barking medley. It would be intolerable to be caught as though trying to cross the threshold.

“Give it me,” he hissed. “I don’t want to meet him.” And as she tantalizingly tendered the packet nearer, he lunged towards her at a desperate angle, and overreaching himself as she deftly withdrew it, fell prone into the open box, his legs asprawl in the air.

“Curl ’em in, quick,” she whispered, with an inspiration, tucking his legs in before he knew what was happening. But as the lid closed on him, he was not sorry to be spared the encounter.

“Get rid of him!” he implored through the keyhole.

“Business pouring in, Gran’fer!” she cried cheerily, as the Gaffer came up astare. “Bear a hand! No, no, not into the cart. It’s to wait here. There is Hey,” she began chanting.

“There is Ree,” came his antiphone, as he grasped the other handle. “Lord, that’s lugsome!” he panted, dropping it as soon as it was inside and letting himself fall upon it. “Whew!” he breathed heavily. Nip, too, all abristle leaped on the box and yapped hysterically, as though nosing for a rat. This was the last straw. Will, whose head the Gaffer was pressing through the far from inflexible lid, and who already felt asphyxiating, gave a vigorous heave.

“Why, it’s aloive!” cried the Gaffer, jumping up nervously. Then as the lid flew up, Nip was hurled into space and Will’s red poll popped up. “It’s a Will-in-the-box,” cried Jinny.

“Willie Flynt!” gasped the Gaffer.

“Yes, Gran’fer,” she said in laughing triumph. “And you carried him in!”

“Ha, ha, ha!” A great roar of glee came from the jubilant junior, and in the act of scrambling up, his knees relaxed in helpless mirth and he let himself fall forward once more in the box, in a convulsion of merriment. “Daniel Quarles, Carrier! Ha, ha, ha!”

“And see, Gran’fer!” cried Jinny in still greater triumph. “He came in on his hands and knees!”

Daniel Quarles’s bemused countenance changed magically.

“Ho, ho, ho!” he croaked. “On his hands and knees! Ho, ho, ho!”

Will’s spasms froze as by enchantment.

“Come along, Will,” said Jinny, hauling him out. “It’s a fair draw and you’ve got to shake hands.”

Will manfully put out his hand. “You nearly squashed me, Mr. Quarles,” he said ruefully.

“Ye wanted settin’ on,” said the Gaffer, chuckling, and he took the fleshy young hand in his bony fingers. “Ye sot yourself to ruin us. But what says the Book?” he demanded amiably. “He that diggeth a pit shall tumble into——”

“A box,” wound up Jinny merrily.

“Oi never knowed he was there, did, Oi’d a-tarned that key,” said her grandfather, guffawing afresh.

“And everybody would have thought me in Australia, and then after long years a skeleton would have been found,” said Will, with grim humour.

Jinny clapped her hands. “Just like Mr. Flippance’s play, The Mistletoe Bough!”

She had closed the house-door. A timid tapping at it, which had gone unobserved, now grew audible.

“There’s your dad!” said Jinny.

Will’s eyes widened. “My dad?” he breathed incredulously.

“Git in the box!” whispered the Gaffer, almost bursting with glee. “Git in the box!” His sinewy arms seized the young man round the waist.

Will struggled indignantly. “I nearly choked!” he spluttered.

“Sh!” Jinny with her warning finger and dancing eyes stilled him. “Just for fun—only for a moment!”

Her instinct divined that to let the old man have his way would be the surest method of clinching the reconciliation. He could then never go back on her later, never resent the trick played upon him. It would become his trick, his farce, it would provide a fund of happy memories for the rest of his life. And as she cried “Come in!” and the latch lifted and Caleb’s white-rimmed, cherubic countenance was poked meekly through a gap, while her grandfather, stroking his beard, composed his face to an exaggerated severity, Jinny felt that life was almost too delicious for laughter.

“Hullo, young chap!” was the Gaffer’s genial greeting. “What brings you here?”

“Oi—Oi happened to be passin’,” explained Caleb awkwardly, while his puzzled eyes roved from the girl to his senior, and then towards Nip, who was cowering in a corner, too nerve-shattered to leap on the lid again. “You ain’t seen my Willie?” He moved forward questingly.

The older man tried to answer, then a guffaw burst from that toothless mouth, and turning his back he blew his nose thundrously into his handkerchief, while his lean sides shook like a jelly. “Why ever should we see your Willie?” cried Jinny, saving the situation. “Ain’t he gone furrin?”

Caleb rubbed his eyes. “But Oi seen him at this door—he’ll be late for the coach.”

“At this door?” the Gaffer succeeded in saying, and then his handkerchief came into play again and he sneezed and coughed and blew like a grampus.

“Oi seen him just by the sill, swingin’ forth and back like a parrot on a perch.”

At that Jinny had some pains to keep a stiff lip, and even the box-lid quivered, but not with laughter, she surmised.

“I’m afraid you must have dreamed it,” she replied.

“Lord!” quoth Caleb, and dropped dazedly on the box. To see the Gaffer’s face when the lid shot up under his visitor was worth more than Mr. Flippance’s finest show. The very soul of old English mirth was there. You would have thought that this crude device had never entered human brain before, was as fresh as the first laughter of Eden. And what heightened the humour of the situation was that Caleb was by no means overpleased to find Will had no intention of catching his coach. Nor did he begin to enter into the spirit of the thing till, admitting that Martha would “exult in gladness,” it occurred to him what a surprise for her it would be to get her boy delivered back to her inside the box. Eagerly the two old men imagined the scene, catching fire from each other, improvising Martha’s dialogue for her, from her amazement at seeing the box back, down to the colossal climax, till the mere idea had them both rolling about in helpless quiverings and explosions. Nor could Will, though he said he’d be danged if he’d stuff himself in again, and groused he’d got cramp in every limb, altogether escape the contagion, while to witness the roisterous merriment of the two hairy ancients gave Jinny such an exquisite joy of life as not even her lover’s first kiss had given her. Such an assurance streamed from it of life being sound at the centre: a bubbling fount of sweetness and love and innocent laughter. It wiped out for ever the memory of that morbid doubt of the nature of things that had assailed her as she sat under the gaze of the stuffed owl in Mrs. Pennymole’s cottage, the day of the rape of Methusalem. Tears welled through her smiles as Will at last bade his father lend a hand in transporting the box to the waiting cart. It must return to Frog Farm, even if he was not inside it.

“And I don’t believe there ever were any provisions, Jinny,” he grinned, with an afterthought.

“Oh yes, there are,” said Jinny. “Look! And a bottle of brandy too!”

“You dear!” he began, but Jinny cut him short with warning signals. The sudden revelation of their relations might undo all the good of the spree, by reviving her grandfather’s apprehensions of desertion. Indeed, when the hurly-burly was over, he could scarcely fail to ask himself what this sportive intimacy of the young couple portended, especially as he had even in the past suspected the answer. The truth must be broken to him cautiously, and with that reflection came the chilling remembrance that all this hubbub and laughter had solved nothing, that the situation, though superficially eased, was essentially the same as before, that the problem had only been postponed. Putting Will in a box was not keeping him in England. He would probably have to sail just the same, and the pain of parting be borne afresh, and even if he remained, she could not abandon her grandfather. But she shook off these thoughts. Enough for the moment that Will was hers again.

“Oi’ve never laughed so much since Oi seen that Andraa at Che’msford Fair the day Oi fust met Annie!” said her grandfather, wiping his eyes, as she set off on her delayed round, with Will at her side, and Caleb and the box in the cart, and Nip bounding like mad along the muddy road.

But it was impossible to keep Caleb in mind. Will was too impatient and too famished a lover for that, and it is not often that you sit at your sweetheart’s side when you ought to be whirling towards the Antipodes. Caleb could not help seeing happy backs, circumplicated—in the more solitary roads—by arms, and the hope, first implanted by Martha, that he would be relieved of Will after all, and in so desirable a fashion, grew more and more assured, though the occasional rigidity of the bodies under observation unsettled him afresh.

“Aren’t you late for the coach?” he heard Bundock’s voice inquire at one of these prim intervals.

“No, too early!” laughed Will.

“But you’re going the wrong way!”

“The first time I’ve gone right!” said Will, and with magnificent indiscretion he turned and kissed Jinny.

“Oh dear!” Jinny gasped, red as fire. “It’ll be all over Chipstone by to-night.”

“I wanted the banns proclaimed as soon as possible,” he said, unabashed.

Then they became aware of a curious gulping sound behind them which drowned even Methusalem’s tick-tacks. They turned their heads. Caleb—convinced at last—had buried his face in the famous “muckinger” mentioned between them only that morning.

“What’s up, dad?” cried Will sympathetically. “Got a toothache?”

“It’s the joy at you and Jinny,” he sobbed apologetically. “And to think that some folk are near-sighted and can’t see God, their friend.”

“Meaning me, dad?” asked Will, not untouched.

“Meanin’ mother, Willie. Lord, what a state Oi left her in—all blarin’ and lamentation. ‘Have faith,’ Oi says to her. But Oi’m afeared she’s got too much brains and book-larnin’!”

“Oh, I say, dad!” laughed Will. “Wouldn’t Bundock like to hear that?”

“Bundock’s of the same opinion,” said Caleb, meaning the bed-ridden Bundock. “‘Few texts and much faith,’ he says to me once. And faith cometh by hearin’, don’t one of ’em tell us? Singafies the ear can’t take hold of a clutter o’ texts.”

“Oh, but surely Mrs. Flynt has faith?” protested Jinny.

“She’s too taken up with other folks’ faith,” Caleb maintained stoutly. “Wanted Mrs. Skindle to break bread with her and look for the New Jerusalem—she ain’t found much of a Jerusalem, poor lone widder. And wanted to baptize that Flip gen’leman, but he never would come to the scratch. And tried her tricks and texts on your poor old Gran’fer, she let out. But when it comes to takin’ a sorrow from the hand of God, her friend, she sets and yowls like a heathen what runs naked in the wilderness. Oi’m done with that Christy Dolphin stuff—it don’t bring the peace of God, and Oi’ll tell her sow to her head the next time she’s at me to be a Jew!”

He mopped up the remains of his tears. “And same as Oi did jine the Sin agog,” he added pensively, “how do Oi know she wouldn’t goo on gooin’ forrard?”