Now Geoffrey's eyes had been fixed upon his plate for the previous four or five minutes, and in removing them he had only carried them to the spoon, which, from its fulness and the distance of its transit, necessitated a steady watching through the whole of the route. Just as intently as the keeper's eyes had been fixed on the spoon, Fancy's had been fixed on her father's, without premeditation or the slightest phase of furtiveness; but there they were fastened.
This was the reason why:
**** was sitting next to her on the right side, and on the side of the table opposite to her father. Fancy had laid her right hand lightly down upon the table-cloth for an instant, and to her alarm ****, after dropping his fork and brushing his forehead as a reason, flung down his own left hand, overlapping a third of Fancy's with it, and keeping it there. So the innocent Fancy, instead of pulling her hand from the trap, settled her eyes on her father's, to guard against his discovery of this perilous game of ****'s. **** finished his mouthful; Fancy finished, her crumb, and nothing was done beyond watching Geoffrey's eyes. Then the hands slid apart;
Fancy's going over six inches of cloth, ****'s over one. Geoffrey's eye had risen.
"I said Fred Shiner is a nice solid feller," he repeated, more emphatically.
"He is; yes, he is," stammered ****; "but to me he is little more than a stranger."
"O, sure. Now I know en as well as any man can be known. And you know en very well too, don't ye, Fancy?"
Geoffrey put on a tone expressing that these words signified at present about one hundred times the amount of meaning they conveyed literally.
**** looked anxious.
"Will you pass me some bread?" said Fancy in a flurry, the red of her face becoming slightly disordered, and looking as solicitous as a human being could look about a piece of bread.
"Ay, that I will," replied the unconscious Geoffrey. "Ay," he continued, returning to the displaced idea, "we are likely to remain friendly wi' Mr. Shiner if the wheels d'run smooth."
"An excellent thing--a very capital thing, as I should say," the youth answered with exceeding relevance, considering that his thoughts, instead of following Geoffrey's remark, were nestling at a distance of about two feet on his left the whole time.
"A young woman's face will turn the north wind, Master Richard: my heart if 'twon't." **** looked more anxious and was attentive in earnest at these words. "Yes; turn the north wind," added Geoffrey after an impressive pause. "And though she's one of my own flesh and blood . . . "
"Will you fetch down a bit of raw-mil' cheese from pantry-shelf?"
Fancy interrupted, as if she were famishing.
"Ay, that I will, chiel; chiel, says I, and Mr. Shiner only asking last Saturday night . . . cheese you said, Fancy?"
**** controlled his emotion at these mysterious allusions to Mr. Shiner,--the better enabled to do so by perceiving that Fancy's heart went not with her father's--and spoke like a stranger to the affairs of the neighbourhood. "Yes, there's a great deal to be said upon the power of maiden faces in settling your courses," he ventured, as the keeper retreated for the cheese.
"The conversation is taking a very strange turn: nothing that _I_ have ever done warrants such things being said!" murmured Fancy with emphasis, just loud enough to reach ****'s ears.
"You think to yourself; 'twas to be," cried Enoch from his distant corner, by way of filling up the vacancy caused by Geoffrey's momentary absence. "And so you marry her, Master Dewy, and there's an end o't."
"Pray don't say such things, Enoch," came from Fancy severely, upon which Enoch relapsed into servitude.
"If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single, we do," replied ****.
Geoffrey had by this time sat down again, and he now made his lips thin by severely straining them across his gums, and looked out of the window along the vista to the distant highway up Yalbury Hill.