When Putnam's Only Gentleman had brought her a saucer of milk the M.-w.-M. would approach with a great air of gallantry and high breeding, and deliberately thrusting his great foot into the saucer, would upset it. That was what the M.-w.-M. thought a joke.
Apart from Maudie the yard was deserted now. The horses moved restlessly in their loose-boxes, but there was no bustle of shirt-sleeved urchins with buckets and pitchforks mucking them out. For it was Sunday morning, and the lads were elsewhere.
Arrayed on the long-backed roofs the fan-tails sidled, cooed, and blinked in the sun. In a sycamore in the Paddock Close a hedge-sparrow raised its thin sweet song, and the celandine lifted a pale and fragile face under the beeches on the hillside. Hope was everywhere except in Maudie's heart, for February was already on the wane.
The back door of the house opened, and Mrs. Woodburn, grayer than of old, stately and aproned, stood in it with a corn-measure in her hand, and tossed showers of golden grain for the fan-tails who came fluttering to her call.
Albert, busy on his chin with a shaving brush, peeped surreptitiously round the door of the saddle-room, and seeing Ma opposite withdrew swiftly; but he kept the door ajar as though awaiting something he was determined not to miss.
Mrs. Woodburn retired indoors, and a few minutes later there came the noisy clacking of a horse and cart entering the cobbled yard.
Instantly Albert was all alert. He flung a towel about his neck and looked out.
An ostler from Lewes, known familiarly as Cherry, had pulled up a dog-cart opposite the pump. The old horse stretched his neck, shook his collar from his sweating shoulders, and, breathing on the water in the trough, drank delicately.
Mr. Silver descended from the cart.
He marked the fair lad in the door of the saddle-room and greeted him in his large and leisurely way: