The young man addressed regarded Aaron without emotion. Elias stood a head taller than his rival, was ten years younger, and very much poorer; but he had a handsome face, a sturdy body, and a stout right arm.
“You’m a silly poult,” he said contemptuously. “As if a sandy-headed little monkey like you would take any maiden onless he wanted her money. An’ Mistress Merle have got two pounds for every one of yours. As for me, I doan’t care a cuss for the stuff, and wish to God ’twas all drownded in Dart. All men know that I kept company with her afore her uncle died, never knowin’ as she was gwaine to have his ill-got money; an’ I wish her never had got it; for then her might have looked at me very like. But when it comed out her was up to her neck in gold, so to say, I knowed it must stand between us, and that a gamekeeper weren’t no husband for her.”
“You seed yourself as others seed you—an’ that’s a very rare thing,” said another man.
“All the same, you’re a zany for your pains,” declared the old woman, who had learned what she desired to learn. “You kept company with missus—you say so. Then ’twas her place, not yours, to say what was to be done after she was lifted up in the land. I doan’t mean for a moment that she’d look at a velveteen coat, so you needn’t fox yourself as you’ve got any chance at all with her—yet her did, careless-like, name your name to me among other chaps as didn’t ’pear to have learnt any manners in their bearin’ toward women.”
A strong pulse stirred Elias Bassett’s slow nature and made him stare at the withered old woman.
“No call to glaze like a gert bull wi’ your eyes so round as pennies,” she said. “An’ what’s more, you needn’t take no comfort from what I’ve told ’e. I reckon her ban’t for no Dartymoor market. Wi’ her mort o’ money an’ dearth o’ years, her can very well wait awhile wi’out jumping at the first clodpole among ’e as offers.”
At this moment a strange man came among them and the subject was dropped for that time, before the interesting spectacle of a face unfamiliar to all present.
The new arrival carried himself as one superior to his company. He was booted and spurred, held in one hand a pair of holsters, in the other a riding-whip. He gave no general salute to those present, neither did he order refreshment, but casting one quick glance about him, addressed himself to Gammer Trout and asked to see the mistress of the inn.
Nicholas Merle was a big, clean-shorn man, with bright eyes, quick movements, and the assertive manner of one accustomed to have his way. There was no contempt in his attitude to the folk assembled, but he took it for granted that he exceeded them in importance, even as his interests rose above their own; and not one among them questioned the assumption.
“Acquaint Mistress Merle that I am come—her cousin Nicholas from Yorkshire.”