"Then you can keep that or not," said he, "as you think fit; but I go and see him now and then, and, what's more, I'm not ashamed of it."
"I should think not!" the girl broke out; and Fuller sunned himself in the warmth of fine eyes on fire. "I mean," stammered Gwynneth, "after all this time, and all he has done!"
"What I said to myself last Christmas, miss; and I'm the only man that say it to-day, in this here village full of old women and hypocrites; if you'll excuse my blunt way o' speaking to a young lady like you. 'This here's gone on long enough,' thinks I; 'an' it's the season of peace an' good-will,' I says to myself; 'darned if I don't step across the road to cheer up the poor old reverend, an' Sir Wilton can turn me out of house an' home if he find out an' think proper.' Don't you mistake me, miss; I wasn't thinking of Sir Wilton in what I said just now, and ought not to have said to a young lady like you. No, miss, Sir Wilton has his own quarrel with the reverend; and I had my quarrel, as far as that go; but, Gord love yer, a man of my experience can afford to forgive an' forget, an' be generous as well as just. There isn't a juster man alive than me, Miss Gwynneth; and not a soul in this parish, or out of it, that can say I'm not generous too."
"I'm sure of it, Mr. Fuller. But did you go over to the rectory?"
"There and then," cried Fuller; "there—and—then. And I told him straight that I for one—but that's no use to go over what I said and he said," observed the saddler, hastily. "I can only tell you that in ten minutes we were chattun away as though nothun had ever come between us. And what do you suppose, miss? What do you suppose?"
Gwynneth shook her head, unable to imagine what was coming, and anxious to hear.
"He hadn't seen a newspaper in all these years! Hadn't so much as heard of that there Home Rule Bill of old Gladstone's, and didn't even know there'd been a war in the Sowd'n!" Gwynneth looked equally ignorant of this. "You know, miss? The Sowd'n, where General Gordon was betrayed and deserted by them varmin you'd stick up for. But we won't quarrel no more about that: only to think of the poor old reverend knowun no more about it than the man in the moon until I told him! Why, I had to tell him one of the Royal Family was dead an' buried; it would have been just the same if it had been the Queen herself, God bless her!"
"So he has been absolutely shut off from the world," Gwynneth murmured.
"There you've hit it, miss! 'Shut off from the world,' there you've put it into better language than I did," said the saddler, with his most complimentary air. "Gord love yer, miss, it used to be the reverend that passed his Standard on to me; but ever since last Christmas it's been me that's taken my East Anglian over to him; so the boot's been on the other leg properly; and right glad I've been to do anything for him, and to take my pipe across now and then as though nothun had ever happened. Not that he fare to care much for that, neither; he've been so long alone, I do believe he've got to like his own society as well as any. Yes, miss, shut off from the world he have been and he is; but he won't be shut off from the world much longer!"
"Oh?"