Villages are always concluding there is something wrong about people.
“What does he do?” inquired our village.
“Where does he get his blue coat with brass buttons, his tartan waistcoat and green satin tie with red ends? We admit all this looks like a gentleman. But yet, somehow, a gentleman is a horse of another color than this Robinson.”
George had sometimes laughed at all this, sometimes been very angry, and always stood up stoutly for his friend and lodger.
And now the fools were right and he was wrong. His friend and protege was handcuffed before his eyes and carried off to the county jail amid the grins and stares of a score of gaping rustics, who would make a fine story of it this evening in both public-houses; and a hundred voices would echo some such conversational Tristich as this:
1st Rustic. “I tawld un as much, dinn't I now, Jarge?”
2d Rustic. “That ye did, Richard, for I heerd ee.”
1st Rustic. “But, la! bless ye, he don't vally advice, he don't.”
George Fielding groaned out, “I'm ready to go now—I'm quite ready to go—I am leaving a nest of insults;” and he darted into the house, as much to escape the people's eyes as to finish his slight preparations for so great a journey.
Two men were left alone; sulky William and respectable Meadows. Both these men's eyes followed George into the house, and each had a strong emotion they were bent on concealing, and did conceal from each other; but was it concealed from all the world?