“Now, what are you two conspiring about?” inquired Miss Susan, entering, brisk, smiling, and inquisitive.
“I’m only discussing your chauffeur, me darlin’ Miss Susan. I notice that several of the village girls drop in on Mrs. Hogben—you see I live opposite—and they expose their natural admiration without scruple or reserve.”
“Owen is a useful young man, if he is a bit ornamental—isn’t he, Aurea? I’m going to get him to help me in the greenhouse, for I don’t believe, at this rate, that we shall ever use the car.”
CHAPTER XIII
THE DRUM AND ITS PATRONS
Mrs. Hogben had lost no time in giving her lodger explicit instructions as to what was expected of him in Ottinge! Her lecture assumed a negative form. He was not to take out any one’s girl, or there’d be trouble; he was not to talk too much politics, or there’d be more trouble; he was not to drink and get fuddled and fighting, or there was the Bench and a fine; as to amusement, there was cricket, Mrs. Topham’s Library, and the Drum Inn, for his evenings.
The good woman said to herself, “The motor is always washed and put away by six o’clock, and if he comes here, he must either sit in his room or in the kitchen, and she wasn’t a-goin’ to have that blocked up with young girls, and never a chair for herself and her own friends.”
Wynyard readily took the hint; at Ottinge one must do as Ottinge did, and he cheerfully accompanied Tom over to the Drum a few evenings after his arrival.
“What sort of liquor do they keep, Tom?” he asked, as they crossed the street.
“Well, some be better nor some, but there’s no bad beer; the old stuff here is rare and strong, but it comes pretty dear.”
The low, wainscoted taproom, with its sanded floor, was full of day-labourers, herds, ploughmen, cow-men, and carters taking their bit of pleasure, talking loudly and disjointedly, drinking beer in mugs, or playing the ever-popular game of “ring.” Here, for the first time in his life, Wynyard was brought into personal contact, as man to man, with the agricultural world as it is. In the more exclusive bar were to be found farmers, owners of certain comfortable red houses scattered up and down the street, the organist, the schoolmaster, the grocer—in short, the moneyed patrons of the hostelry. Several were talking over village affairs, discussing politics, racing, artificial manures, or cattle. Some were playing draughts, some were reading the daily papers, others were doing nothing. Of these, one was a bent, gentlemanly individual in a grey tweed suit, with a grey moustache, a grey, sunken, vacant face, who sat aloof smoking a brier pipe—his eyes staring into vacancy. Another was a white-haired, shrunken old man, who wore green carpet slippers, and occupied a cushioned arm-chair, and the best seat near the fire. This was Joe Thunder, the oldest inhabitant, ninety-three years of age his last birthday. Once upon a time he had seen the world—and other worlds; now he was comfortably moored in a fine, substantial cottage with a garden back and front, kept bees, was an authority on roses, and filled the post of the patriarch of Ottinge.