Rawson, as became his position, maintained a somewhat dubious attitude.
“I could wish,” he observed, with a heavy frown, “that he had given us some indication as to his previous occupation or station in life. His coming in here and sitting down for a drink was friendly-like but not exactly usual. To me he seemed scarcely the sort of man whom the Squire, for instance, would be likely to take a fancy to.”
“The Squire be a great gentleman,” the grocer said reverently. “There aren’t many like him left in these parts. He’s not likely to take up with a stranger. Why should he?”
“Why, indeed?” Rawson assented. “Yet he seemed to take quite a fancy to Mr. Endacott. Mr. Gregory, too, paid the young lady quite a lot of attention.”
“And no wonder,” the innkeeper remarked. “She was a proper-looking young lady. There ain’t many in these parts could hold a candle to her for looks. You’re not very gay just now at the Hall, Mr. Rawson,” he continued.
The butler stifled a regretful sigh. Things at the Hall were a great deal less gay than he was prepared to disclose.
“We’re generally pretty quiet during the summer,” he admitted. “The Squire was never one for entertaining much before the shooting. I did think that Mr. Gregory being at home might have made a little difference, but he’s due, they say, to start for foreign parts at any moment.—Six o’clock, gentlemen. I wish you all good evening.”
There was a simultaneous break-up of the little party. Rawson, ponderous as ever and grey of complexion, notwithstanding his country life, first made a dignified exit, and, walking a short way down the village street, climbed the stile which led into the park. Mr. Craske crossed the street and returned to the pleasant-looking, creeper-covered establishment behind the long shop windows of which he and his father and grandfather before him had dispensed groceries and gossip for the last hundred years. Finally the young man, Fielding, took his silent departure, mounting a motor bicycle which he had left leaning up against the wall. He glanced at his watch and reflected for a few moments.
“Be going for a ride, Mr. Fielding?” the innkeeper, who had followed him outside, enquired.
The young man looked up and down the sleepy sun-baked street, and glanced at a signboard where the road forked.