“I reckon I’d better go home, lass,” he said, sulkily.
Bess set her milk-pail down on the stone floor and untied her hood.
“You take some cooking for, Dan,” she said, mischievously.
“I don’t want to lick shoe-leather for a welcome.”
“Never worry. We will be ready for you another day.”
Bess, having caught a significant twinkle in Dame Ursula’s eyes, gave Dan Grimshaw a courtesy, and picked up her pail. The man pulled his fur cap down over his eyes, and, with a last glance at the girl, plodded away over the snow, whistling, his breath steaming on the frosty air. Bess watched him go, and then closed and locked the door. Old Ursula was bending over the fire, turning the bacon in the pan.
She looked at Bess curiously, and scolded the black cat that had put its fore-paws on the milk-pail and was trying to lap the milk.
“Did you dream, lass?” she asked, inquisitively.
Bess looked serious of a sudden and colored, though her face hardly betrayed any deepening flush. She was still puzzling over the face of the man she had seen in her dream, and yet the girl was not in a mood to confess to Mother Ursula in the matter.
“Not I,” she said, laughing, and taking a rough cloth from a drawer and spreading it on the oak table.
Ursula frowned, and mumbled over the pan. Isaac’s youngest son was her favorite, a tall, flaxen-polled stripling, with a merry face and good-humored blue eyes. Ursula did not love Black Dan. He was too big and masterful, too surly, too much of a great bully.
“Dan came and threw stones at my window,” she said, suddenly.
“I told him I wouldn’t have climbed out of bed to see his ugly face.”
Old Ursula forked the rashers onto a hot plate and looked at Bess meaningly, wagging a lean forefinger to give emphasis to her words.
“You must be shy of Dan,” she said, shrewdly.
“The great fool is a rough, masterful dog. Throw him a bone now and then, lass, to keep him from growing surly. He’s no mate for you, girl, the great, black-faced oaf. David’s the lad to make a good husband. You must be shy of Dan, Bess.”
The girl swept her black hair over her ears, laughed, and began to bustle about the kitchen.
“I can take care of myself, mother,” she said.
“Better be your own mistress, lass, than let Black Dan have the handling of your love.”