Flo dared to glance past her again. The tall unmistakable figure had been left behind and a smile spread from Flo’s eyes downward, widening her full, pleasant lips.
“Enjoyed yourself?” asked Mrs. Nadin, softening. “It’s non bin a bad show, though I’ve seen a lot a damn sight better.”
She started then to talk with a thin woman opposite, and Flo looked out and wondered how Jack would get back, and whether he had travelled in the chara from The Bull. They seemed to get quickly to Miller’s Dale, and there there was a great unloading. After the train had gone on the platform was nearly as full as at Bakewell. Mrs. Nadin stood on her toes and looked everywhere, and Flo pretended to look as well. Almost at once, however, the short local train chuffed in and there was nothing they could do but get in with the rest. Mrs. Nadin, after claiming a window seat with her handbag, stood obstructively in the doorway trying to watch everybody getting in elsewhere. Then without warning a porter slammed the door. She tugged angrily at the window strap so as to get her head out to tell him something, but the train started.
“Did you see the old devil?” she demanded.
“No,” said Flo, guessing that he was not the porter.
“By . . . by . . . if he’s slipped me agen, God help him,” said Mrs. Nadin solemnly, and then most unexpectedly she shut up. Her hand gripped and ungripped on her umbrella. She did not speak again till they had left the local train and were making across the broad way between the two Buxton stations, for the train to Moss. Here she broke out: “The sly monkey! I’d smash his grin off if on’y I had ’im. Pub crawlin’ home wi’ the rest, bluein’ his brass in like a big soft baby. Not enough sense ta know how ta button ’isself.”
That was the last. She seemed to become resigned. She walked out of Moss Station in her most business-like way, and Flo kept just behind. The lanky taxi-man was there, and with his tongue bulged out his left cheek secretly at Flo when he saw that they were still without the farmer.
“Didna yo’ find ’im, missis?” he asked jovially.
Mrs. Nadin tucked herself into the car without replying. He spat and shut the door, and when he was in his seat contented himself with questions about the show.
“There were on’y one thing missin’,” said Mrs. Nadin, “a class for donkeys.”
In what state Mr. Nadin got back, whether drunk or sober, Flo never got to know. He came some time after she had gone to sleep. In the morning he was up before them all and worked in brooding silence. Half-way through milking Flo saw him at the yard gate, so that the show had not enabled him to forget the hay. Mrs. Nadin nagged a little more even than usual, but it was plain to Flo that after his escapades the farmer could look after himself. His silence, his lack of retorts to her angry attacks, left his wife without ammunition, as it were. And so the matter passed and life became normal again, except for Flo’s memories of the show. She wrote home a good description, telling of Jack, though she did not mention sitting on his back.
The return to ordinary routine was irksome. Dot, too, was in her worst mood.
“I suppose you’ll have the decency not to sneak about anything you saw yesterday,” she said disagreeably the first time they were left together in the kitchen.
“There was nothing to sneak about,” answered Flo.
“You wouldn’t have gone if I’d had my way.”
“I know,” said Flo.
After breakfast rain fell. Every day, sometimes heavily, sometimes only in occasional showers, some rain came and August wasted away with the hay in Lake Meadow going darker and darker and the new grass growing taller till the once proud cocks were almost lost.
“We’ll cart it off an’ fill Black Pit,” said Mr. Nadin on the first Thursday in September, “it’s only spoilin’ t’other.”
Thus all day they carted, and Flo from her bedroom could see the pale circles where the cocks had stood so long. She asked Bert if there was nothing else that could be done.
“It’s goin’ rotten, but it’ll never rot,” he answered cryptically. “The pit’s best place for it.”