She had squatted down on the step behind him.
'Be off wi yer,' said David, angrily, getting up in order to escape her.
But she pursued him across the farmyard.
'Have yo got a letter ?' 'No, I haven't.' 'Did yo ask at t' post-office ?' 'No, I didn't.' 'An why didn't yo ?' 'Because I didn't want--soa there--get away.' And he stalked off.
Louie, left behind, chewed the cud of reflection in the darkness.
Presently, to his great disgust, as he was sitting under a wall of one of the pasture-fields, hidden, as he conceived, from all the world by the night, he heard the rustle of a dress, the click of a stone, and there was Louie dangling her legs above him, having attacked him in the rear.
'Uncle Reuben's talkin 'is stuff about Mr.Dyson.I seed 'im gooin passt Wigsons' this afternoon.

He's nowt--he's common, he is.' The thin scornful voice out of the dark grated on him intolerably.
He bent forward and shut his ears tight with both his hands.

To judge from the muffled sounds he heard, Louie went on talking for a while; but at last there had been silence for so long, that he took his hands away, thinking she must have gone.
'Yo've been at t' prayer-meetin, I tell yo, an yo're a great stupid muffin-yed, soa theer.' And a peremptory little kick on his shoulder from a substantial shoe gave the words point.
He sprang up in a rage, ran down the hill, jumped over a wall or two, and got rid of her.

But he seemed to hear her elfish laugh for some time after.

As for himself, he could not analyse what had come over him.