“Yessir—I daresay, sir—King John—wasn’t ’e the party that ’ad eight wives and cut their ’eads off as fast as he got tired of them?”
“Well, what sort of a girl was this?”
“A fine gal, sir. A reelly fine, purty gal, and Gipsy Steve, he looked after her orlways and led her a life of it, if any young chap so much as looked at her. And now, sir, ’ere’s a bit of queer human natur’,” went on the gossip, sinking his voice and looking preternaturally wise. “There’s some wot sez they don’t believe the gal’s with Mr Roland at all, but that his brother started the story. Ah! he’s a bad lot, is young Mr Hubert.”
“Well, but why the deuce should he tell such an infernal lie as that?”
The loquacious one looked at him for a moment pityingly, and his voice grew even more confidential.
“Bless your ’art. Don’t you see, sir? The young one wants to stick to all the swag. If the other comes back, well, of course, it’ll make all the difference to this one. And so ’e says ’e sor his brother and Lizzie in London together, and the General’s more furious than ever about it.”
“And what do they think in Wandsborough?”
“Well, sir, there’s them as believes it and there’s them as doesn’t. For my part I dunno wot to think, though, of course, it’s no concern o’ mine.”
“H’m!” The stranger yawned and deliberately stretched himself, and began to show signs of moving, and the loquacious one perceived that his fill of gossip was over for the present.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he remarked, “but are you ’Igh Church?”