'What's letters? And the postman to know all as in 'em for anything anybody knows, and grandfather to be almost sure to see 'em. I don't call letters no good at all, and I beg you won't write 'em any more.'
'Did he see them?'
'No thanks to you if he didn't. I don't know why you are come here, Sir Felix,--nor yet I don't know why I should come and meet you. It's all just folly like.'
'Because I love you;--that's why I come; eh, Ruby? And you have come because you love me; eh, Ruby? Is not that about it?' Then he threw himself on the ground beside her, and got his arm round her waist.
It would boot little to tell here all that they said to each other. The happiness of Ruby Ruggles for that half-hour was no doubt complete. She had her London lover beside her; and though in every word he spoke there was a tone of contempt, still he talked of love, and made her promises, and told her that she was pretty. He probably did not enjoy it much; he cared very little about her, and carried on the liaison simply because it was the proper sort of thing for a young man to do. He had begun to think that the odour of patchouli was unpleasant, and that the flies were troublesome, and the ground hard, before the half-hour was over. She felt that she could be content to sit there for ever and to listen to him. This was a realisation of those delights of life of which she had read in the thrice-thumbed old novels which she had gotten from the little circulating library at Bungay.
But what was to come next? She had not dared to ask him to marry her,-- had not dared to say those very words; and he had not dared to ask her to be his mistress. There was an animal courage about her, and an amount of strength also, and a fire in her eye, of which he had learned to be aware. Before the half-hour was over I think that he wished himself away;--but when he did go, he made a promise to see her again on the Tuesday morning. Her grandfather would be at Harlestone market, and she would meet him at about noon at the bottom of the kitchen garden belonging to the farm. As he made the promise he resolved that he would not keep it. He would write to her again, and bid her come to him in London, and would send her money for the journey.