"Not very, sir."
"Well, for instance, one day he was expecting company. There was a fountain in the middle of the lawn at Blowinghouse, and a statue of Hercules that his old father had brought home from Italy and planted in the middle of it. Josh couldn't bear that statue—said the muscles were all wrong. So, if you please, he takes it down, dresses himself in nothing at all—same as you might be, bare as my palm—and a Justice of the Peace, mind you—and stands himself in the middle of the fountain, with all the guests arriving. Not an easy thing to pass off, and it caused a scandal: but folks didn't seem to mind. 'It was Truscott's way,' they said: 'after all, he comes of a clever family, and we hope his son will be better.' A man wants character to carry off a thing like that."
I agreed that character must have been Mr. Truscott's secret.
"Now I couldn't do that for the life of me," Mr. Rogers sighed, and chuckled over another reminiscence. "Josh had a shindy once with a groom. The fellow asked for a rise in wages. 'You couldn't have said anything more hurtful to my feelings,' Josh told him, and knocked him down. There was a hole in one of his orchards where they'd been rooting up an old apple-tree. He put the fellow in that, tilled him up to his neck in earth, and kept him there till he apologised. Not at all an easy thing for a Justice of the Peace to pass off: but, bless you, folks said that he came of a clever county family, and hoped his son would be better. The fellow didn't even bring an action." Mr. Rogers broke off suddenly, and seemed to meditate a new train of thought. "Hang it!" he exclaimed. "I believe 'tis a hundred pounds. I must look it up when I get back."
"What is a hundred pounds, sir?" I asked.
"Penalty for showing a coast-light without authority. Lydia laid me ten pounds I hadn't the pluck, though; and that'll bring it down to ninety at the worst. She'd a small fortune in this trip, too, which she stood to lose: but, as it turns out, I've saved that for her. Oh, she's a treasure!"
"Did you light the flare?" I began to see that I had fallen in with an original, and that he might be humoured.
"Eh?—to be sure I did! 'Slocked away the man in charge by mimicking Pascoe's voice—he's the freighter, and talks like a man with no roof to his mouth. I'm a pretty good mimic, though I say it. Nothing easier, after that. You see, Lydia had laid me ten pounds that as a Justice of the Peace I hadn't wit nor pluck to spoil her next run; honestly, that is. She knows I wouldn't blow on her for worlds. Oh, we understand one another! Now you and I'll go off and call on her, and hear what she says about it. For in a way I've won, and in a way I've not. I stopped the run, but also I've saved the cargo for her: for the devil a notion had I that the soldiers had wind of it; and, but for the flare, the boats would have run in and lost every tub. Here we are, my lad!"
We had climbed the cliff and were crossing a field of stubble grass, very painful to my feet. I saw the shadow of a low hedge in front, but these words of Mr. Rogers conveyed nothing to me. "Soh, soh, my girl!" he called softly, advancing towards the shadow: and at first I supposed him to be addressing the mysterious Lydia. But following I saw him smoothing the neck of a small mare tethered beside the hedge, and the next moment had almost blundered against a light two-wheeled carriage resting on its shafts a few yards away.
Mr. Rogers whispered to me to lift the shafts. "And be quiet about it: there's a road t'other side of the hedge. Soh, my girl—sweetly, sweetly!" He backed the mare between the shafts, harnessed her, and led her along to a gate opening on the road.