The sun was down when he reached the farm; Selina met him in the yard, and leading him swiftly into the stables explained the lay of the land while he unsaddled his horse, but she did not tell him what pressure had been brought to bear on the youngest Miss Tregellas.
John was amazed and delighted. Mr. Hugh Tregellas’ daughter willing to marry him, a common farmer! Pretty too; he had seen her once, before his accident, sitting in the family pew in Cury church—plump, fluffy little thing with round blue eyes, like a kitten. This was incredible luck!
He was young then and hot-blooded, sick of the loneliness of Bosula and the haphazard ministrations of the two slatterns. He was for dashing into the house and starting his love-making there and then, but Selina held him, haggling like a fish wife over the price of the roan. When he at length got away from her it was thick dusk. It was dark in the kitchen, except for the feeble glow of the turf fire, Selina explaining that she had unaccountably run out of tallow dips—the boy should fetch some from Helston on the morrow.
Arethusina came downstairs dressed in her eldest sister’s bombazine dress, borrowed for the occasion. She was not embarrassed; she, like John, was eager for change, weary of the threadbare existence and unending struggle at home, of watching her sisters grow warped and bitter. She saw ahead, saw four gray old women, dried kernels rattling in the echoing shell of Tregellas House, never speaking, hating each other and all things, doddering on to the blank end, four gray nuns cloistered by granite pride. Anything were better than that. She would sob off to sleep swearing to take any chance rather than come to that, and here was a chance. John Penhale stood for life full and flowing in place of want and decay. He might only be a yeoman, but he would have two big farms and could keep her in comfort. She would have children, she hoped, silk dresses and a little lap dog. Some day she might even visit London.
She entered the kitchen in good heart and saw John standing before the fire, a vague but imposing silhouette. A fine figure of a man, she thought, and her heart lifted still higher. She dropped him a mischievous curtsey. He took her hand, laughing, a deep, pleasant laugh. They sat on the settle at the back of the kitchen and got on famously.