“Granted—granted. Only remember this: I’m Dan’s first friend, and best and truest friend, and he’s mine. We’m closer than brothers, him and me; and if I make a joke against him now and then, to score against Bartley here, it’s friendship’s right. But I’ll not let any other man do it.”
The policeman nodded.
“There was the three of you,” he said. “Dan, an’ you, an’ Sir Reginald’s son, Mr Henry. When you were all boys, ’twas a saying in Moreton that one was never seed without t’others. But rare rascals all three in them days! You’ve made my legs tired a many times, chasing of ’e out of the orchards.”
“Such friendships ought to last for ever,” declared Titus, thoughtfully. “Mister Henry’s a good friend to me yet. When I got weakly about the breathing, ’twas him that made Sir Reginald take me on indoors. Though you’ll witness, Sweetland, that I’d have made a good enough gamekeeper.”
The grey man nodded.
“You was larning fast,” he admitted.
“But not so fast as Daniel. He took to it like a duckling to water—in his blood, of course.”
“An’ be Mr Henry his friend still?” asked the policeman.
Titus Sim hesitated.