Well, it was something that Musk had opened his doors to him, if only under pressure of a harrowing occasion; even then it was much, very much, in the prime infidel of the parish. It was a beginning, an example; it might show others the way. Gwynneth presently discovered that it had.
She had not brought Georgie to see the saddler this time, and she was trying to follow that thinker's harangue as though she had really come to him for political instruction; but all the while the sound from among the trees distracted her attention and mystified her mind. It was neither the ringing impact of iron upon iron, nor the swish of a sharp steel point through the soft sandstone. It was the drone of a saw, as Gwynneth knew well enough when she asked what the sound was in the first opportunity afforded her.
"That's the reverend," said the saddler, dryly.
"It sounds like sawing," said disingenuous Gwynneth. "Has he reached the roof?"
"Gord love yer, miss, not he!"
Gwynneth was consumed with an interest that she feared to show, especially with the saddler looking at her through his spectacles as others had done when Mr. Carlton supplied the topic of conversation. It was a look that seemed to ask her how much she knew, and it always offended her. She did not want to know what he had done; all her interest was in what he was doing, alone there behind the trees. Yet now she felt that speak she must, if it was only to soften a single heart, in the very slightest degree, towards that unhappy man; and she had come to the saddler with no other purpose.
"Does no one go near him yet?" she asked point-blank.
The saddler leant across his bench; the girl had refused the only chair in the little workshop, and was standing outside at the open window, as all his visitors did.
"You won't tell Sir Wilton, miss?"
"I shan't go out of my way to make mischief, Mr. Fuller, if that's what you mean. But you had better not tell me any secrets," said Gwynneth, with a coldness that cost her an effort; however, the saddler's skin was in keeping with his calling.