“That’s so; Martin and I landed at Plymouth yesterday. We got to Chagford early this morning.”
Will laughed.
“I never!” he said. “Why, you be lodging with my awn mother at the cottage above Rushford Bridge! You was expected this marnin’, but I couldn’t wait for ’e. You ’m Jan Grimbal—eh?”
“Right! And you ’re a nice host, to be sure!”
“’T is solemn truth, you ’m biding under our roof, the ‘Three Crowns’ bein’ full just now. And I’m sorry I thrawed ’e; but you was that glumpy, and of course I didn’t know ’e from Adam. I’m Will Blanchard.”
“Never mind, Will, we’ll try again some day. I could wrestle a bit once, and learned a new trick or two from a Yankee in Africa.”
“You’ve come back ’mazin’ rich they say, Jan Grimbal?”
“So, so. Not millionaires, but all right—both of us, though I’m the snug man of the two. We got to Africa at the right moment, before 1867, you know, the year that O’Reilly saw a nigger-child playing with the first Kimberley diamond ever found. Up we went, the pair of us. Things have hummed since then, and claims and half-claims and quarter-claims are coming to be worth a Jew’s eye. We’re all right, anyway, and I’ve got a stake out there yet.”
“You ’m well pleased to come back to dear li’l Chagford after so many years of foreign paarts, I should think, Mr. Grimbal?” said Phoebe.
“Ay, that I am. There’s no place like Devon, in all the earth, and no spot like Chagford in Devon. I’m too hard grit to wink an eyelid at sight of the old scenes again myself; but Martin, when he caught first sight of great rolling Cosdon crowning the land—why, his eyes were wetted, if you’ll believe it.”