‘I thought you sold wines and spirits.’
‘So I do. I supply the gentry for miles around; but I does a bit in horses—and other things. And there isn’t a man as ever I sold a horse to as I can’t look in the face this day. I’ve got the prettiest little bay cob in my stable now——’
Richard was obliged to say that that was not his season for buying horse-flesh, and, thanking Mr. Puddephatt, he left the wineshop.
‘A house near the chalk-pits,’ he mused. Then he turned back. ‘I’ll let you know about the room later in the day,’ he said to Mr. Puddephatt.
‘Right, sir,’ answered Mr. Puddephatt.
Richard could not refrain from speculating as to how much Mr. Puddephatt already knew about the Craigs and how much he guessed at. Mr. Puddephatt was certainly a man of weight and a man of caution. The wine-merchant’s eyes continually hinted at things which his tongue never uttered.
CHAPTER V—FIRE
The luncheon with Teresa was a pronounced social success. French rather than Irish in character, it was eaten under a plum-tree in the orchard. Micky waited at table with his hat on, and then disappeared for awhile. At two o’clock he rose again above the horizon, and said that the electric car was at the door. Richard and Teresa set off to meet the two-thirty train at Leighton Buzzard. By this time they had certainly become rather intimate, according to the way of young persons thrown together—by no matter what chance—in the month of June—or any other month. It was not, perhaps, unnatural that Raphael Craig, when he emerged from the railway-station and found the two laughing and chatting side by side in the motor-car, should have cast at them a sidelong glance, in which were mingled amusement, alarm, and warning.