"But might easily find a new one," said Mr. Kekewich, who walked beside Grace on his way to the workers. "Them stepstones be just the very thing we're wanting to bridge the river here."
"Oh, Kek! how can you?" cried Grace.
"Pull down a cross? Tut, tut, iconoclast!" exclaimed Mr. Norcot.
"You may use wicked words, but stone be stone," answered the head man of Fox Tor Farm sulkily; "an' what was one way of marking a grave in the old time may very well stand for a bridge to-day. Look at they fools! What do they think they be doing?"
Woodman heard the question.
"We'm making a ford, and you'm the fool, not us," he replied stoutly.
"What did the master say? Tell me that," asked Kekewich.
"He said 'a bridge,' for I heard him," declared Norcot.
"Ess, he did, an' when he sez 'bridge' he don't mean 'ford'; an' when he sez 'steer' he don't mean 'heifer,' do he? A bridge has got to be builded. So the sooner you fetch gunpowder an' go 'pon the Moor to blast out a good slab of stone as'll go across here without a pier, the better."
"He don't always say what he mean, all the same," retorted Putt, who was in a fighting mood. "Yesterday he told me I was a pink-eyed rabbit, good for nought, an' this marning he called it back, an' said he was sorry he'd spoke it. That shows."