I nodded, restraining myself with difficulty.
"Fool's work!" he muttered. Then with a curious look which made me instinctively draw back, he added, "These things must inconvenience you, madam. I wish you had made your visit to the lane in happier times."
There was a smirk on his face which made him positively repellent. I could scarcely bow my acknowledgments, his look and attitude made the interview so obnoxious. Looking about for William, I stepped down from the stoop. The Deacon followed me.
"Where is William?" I asked.
The Deacon ran his eye over the place, and suddenly frowned with ill-concealed vexation.
"The scapegrace!" he murmured. "What business has he in my barn?"
I immediately forced a smile which, in days long past (I've almost forgotten them now), used to do some execution.
"Oh, he's a boy!" I exclaimed. "Do not mind his pranks, I pray. What a comfortable place you have here!"
Instantly a change passed over the Deacon, and he turned to me with an air of great interest, broken now and then by an uneasy glance behind him at the barn.
"I am glad you like the place," he insinuated, keeping close at my side as I stepped somewhat briskly down the walk. "It is a nice place, worthy of the commendation of so competent a judge as yourself." (It was a barren, hard-worked farm, without one attractive feature.) "I have lived on it now forty years, thirty-two of them with my beloved wife Caroline, and two—" Here he stopped and wiped a tear from the dryest eye I ever saw. "Miss Butterworth, I am a widower."