Mr. Wriford jumped up and waved his arms and laughed aloud and then cried: "That was all right. Now I'm not caring! Now I'm living!"
"Why, look you, my loony," said Mr. Puddlebox, beaming upon him with immense delight, "look you, that was very much all right; and that is why I return praise for it. We might have been killed in falling from there, but most certainly we are not killed; and if we had not fallen we should still be up there, and how I should have found heart to make such a devil of a leap I am not at all aware. Here we are down and nothing the worse save for this disaster that, curse me, my whisky is gone again. Thus there is cause for praise in everything, as I have told you, and in this fall such mighty good cause as I shall challenge you or any man to look at that roof and deny. Now," continued Mr. Puddlebox, getting to his feet, "do you beat your head again, boy, or do we proceed to the farmhouse?"
Mr. Wriford said seriously, "No, I'm damned if I beat my head now, because that time I didn't stop and didn't think except just for a second when we were falling, and then I couldn't stop even if I'd wanted to. No, I'm damned if I beat my head this time."
"What it is," said Mr. Puddlebox, emptying his tail-pocket of the broken whisky bottle, and proceeding with Mr. Wriford towards the farmhouse, "what it is, is that you are damned if you do beat your head—that is, you are spooked, loony, which is the same thing."
Mr. Wriford paid no apparent attention to this, but his glee at believing that, as he had said, he now was not caring and now was living, gave an excited fierceness to his share in their immediate behaviour, which now became very extraordinary.
CHAPTER VII
PROFOUND ATTACHMENT TO HIS FARM OF A FARMER
I
The front door of the farmhouse, embowered in a porch, was found to be on the side further from the strawyard. A fine knocker, very massive, hung upon the door, and this Mr. Puddlebox now seized and operated very loudly, with effect of noise which, echoing through the silent house and through the still air of early morning, would in former circumstances have utterly horrified Mr. Wriford and have put him to panic-stricken flight in very natural apprehension of what it would bring forth. Now, however, it had no other effect upon him than first to make him give a nervous gasp and nervous laugh of nervous glee, and next himself to seize the knocker and put into it all the determination of those old days forever ended and these new days of freedom in which he cared for nothing and for nobody now begun.
Fiercely Mr. Wriford knocked until his arm was tired and then flung down the knocker with a last crash and turned on Mr. Puddlebox a flushed face and eyes that gleamed. "I don't care a damn what happens!" he cried.