"A triflin' matter of business, that's all," answered Cai, who chafed under Mr Philp's inquisitiveness; but chafed, like everybody else, in vain.
"Orderin' your breastplate? . . . It's well to be in good time when you're dealin' with John Peter," said Mr Philp with dreadful jocularity. "As I came along the head o' the town," he explained, "I heard that Snell's wife had passed away in the night. A happy release. I dropped in to see if they'd given you the job."
John Peter shook his head.
"And I don't suppose you'll get it, neither," said Mr Philp; "but I wanted to make sure. Push,—that's what you want. That's the only thing nowadays. Push. . . . You're lookin' at John Peter's misfits, I see," he went on, turning to Cai. "Now, there's a man whose place, as you might say, won't go unfilled much longer—hey?" Mr Philp pointed his walking-stick at the name of the late owner of Rilla, and achieved a sort of watery wink.
"I daresay you mean something by that, Mr Philp," said Cai, staring at him, half angry and completely puzzled. "But be dashed if I know what you do mean."
"There now! And I reck'ned as you an' Cap'n Hunken had ne'er a secret you didn't share!"
'"Bias?" asked Cai slowly. "Who was talkin' of 'Bias?"
"It takes 'em that way sometimes," said Mr Philp, wiping a rheumy eye. "An' the longer they puts it off the more you can't never tell which way it will take 'em. O' course, if Cap'n Hunken didn't tell you he'd been visitin' Rilla lately, he must have had his reasons, an' I'm sorry I spoke."
Cai was breathing hard. "Bias? . . . When?"
"The last time I spied him was two days ago . . . in the late afternoon. Now you come to mention it, I'd a notion at the time he wasn't anxious to be seen. For he came over the fields at the back—across the ten-acre field that Mrs Bosenna carried last week—and a very tidy crop, I'm told, though but moderate long in the stalk. . . . Well, there he was comin' across the stubble—at a fine pace, too, with his coat 'pon his arm—when as I guess he spied me down in the road below and stopped short, danderin' about an' pretendin' to poke up weeds with his stick. 'Some new-fashioned farmin',' thought I; 'weedin' stubble, and in August month too! I wonder who taught the Widow that trick'—for I won't be sure I reckernised your friend, not slap-off. But Cap'n Hunken it was: for to make certain I called and had a drink o' cider with Farmer Middlecoat, t'other side of the hill, an' he'd seen your friend frequent these last few weeks. . . . There now, you don't seem pleased about it!—an' yet 'twould be a very good match for him, if it came off."