“I offered Sharper my sympathy. Wouldn’t have it. Said ‘Why?’ Maintained that we had all got to suffer in this life, and it was better to begin early. Excellent practice. Then his ears crept up and bent over. Got it again later in the day for drawing a caricature of old Borkins. Never did it, of course. Couldn’t draw. Can’t remember who did it. Oh, you did, did you? Like you. Have another?
“Yes, we have a certain amount of business in Dilborough. I’m generally down there once or twice a year. I walk over to Halfpenny Hole and lunch with Sharper. It’s a seven mile walk. But lunch at the hotel is seven-and-six. Doing uncommonly well, is Sharper. He’s in Pentlove, Postlethwaite and Sharper. You know. The only jams that really matter. Pickles, too. Chutney. Very hot stuff. Oh, yes, Sharper’s all right.
“You ought to run down and see Halfpenny Hole. What is it the agents say? Old-world. It’s very old-world. Only three houses in it, and all different. Whether the garden settlement will spoil it or not is another matter. You go and paint it before it gets spoilt.
“Strictly between ourselves, I am not quite sure that Sharper and his wife hit it off. Oh, nothing much. It’s just that when he speaks to her she never answers, and when she speaks to him he never answers. In fact, if she speaks at all he groans and moves his ears. Charming woman, very. Quite pretty. There may be nothing in it. I saw no actual violence. Sharper may merely have been suffering. He wouldn’t be happy if he wasn’t. Have a drink. No?”
CHAPTER II
Halfpenny Hole lay in the bottom of a slope seven miles from Dilborough. Dilborough was almost the same distance from Halfpenny Hole. Jawbones was, I think we must say, an old-world house, and had the date 1623 carved over the doorway. Luke Sharper had carved it himself. A little further down the road there was—there’s no other word for it—an old-world bridge with—I’m afraid we must have it once more—an old-world stream running underneath it. It gave one the impression that it had always been like that. Always the stream under the bridge. Never the bridge under the stream. But now that the Garden Settlement had come things might be very different. Houses were going up; Mr. Doom Dagshaw’s Mammoth Circus was going up; even the rates were going up.
At the end of his honeymoon Luke Sharper went to see a man about a dog, and left his wife to prepare Jawbones for his accommodation. She was a good housekeeper, and Luke acknowledged it. Whenever he thought about her at all, he always added “but she is a good housekeeper.” He was desperately fair.
“This,” said Mabel, opening a door, as Luke began his visit of inspection, “this is your den.”