He had acquiesced in a few monosyllables to Dick when Dick had asked him for Hilda as his wife, and had not referred to any agreement with Wilfred. No one in the village knew how or when the romance between Dick and Hilda had begun. Dick was already head shepherd, spending days at a time up on the hills, and Hilda had never been noticed slipping up between the gorse bushes to be with him. However they arranged it, their announcement that they wanted to marry caused a flutter of amazed gossip round the village.

‘She can’t do it. What’s her father up to? She’s promised to Wilf, isn’t she?’

‘That’s what happens to a motherless girl. Hal never notices what goes on under his nose.’

‘She’s a sly quiet one, if ever there was one.’

‘Still, Hal and Widow Annie had arranged it – and I suppose Sir Hugh agreed. You can’t have young people taking matters into their own hands like this.’

‘Where’d we be if we all did just as we like?’

‘Wilf looked black as thunder when Annie told him.’

‘What did she tell him?’

‘Why, how Dick had gone to Sir Hugh and said he wanted to marry Hilda – can’t think why with her freckly face. There’s better girls coming on at Rockwell if he’d waited a year or two. Of course, Sir Hugh thinks a lot of Dick, been so good with the lambs and all that, though he knew Hilda was promised to Wilf. And Milly, she sneaked off from the loom shed and listened and heard him say he must think it over, as he always does – means he must ask M’Dame – and she, Milly I mean, went and told Annie and Annie runs to the Hall – oho, there was a to-do. She wants to complain to Sir Hugh, but he’d gone away to the forest and she pours it all out to M’Dame, and M’Dame keeps a still face, not a smile, not a sneer, yet you know she never could stand Annie. Just says Sir Hugh’s the one to decide, say no more now, I’ll talk to Sir Hugh, she says.’

And so the gossip went on, fed by frequent reports from sharp-eared Milly – how Dame Margaret told Sir Hugh what a valuable worker Dick was, how desirable it was to keep him in a good mood and faithful, how obviously he was in love with Hilda who was a decent girl in spite of the freckles, and what an ugly uncouth lout Wilf was. A marriage which was so much against the wish of the wife – and M’Dame knew this because she had already had a talk with Hilda privately in the orchard – was unlikely to produce strong babies and a providently run house. There was no advantage to anyone but Wilf in allowing such a marriage to take place, and plenty of disadvantages, so let the lovers have their way. And Sir Hugh, a little wearied by his wife’s eloquence, agreed. As all knew, he was always ready to be persuaded by Dame Margaret. So when Annie bustled along to hear what she called Justice and the Law, she only heard that Sir Hugh had agreed that Dick should marry Hilda.