“And so I do. ’Tis my best pipe—for great occasions only. There’s nought belongs to me I treasure more. I had it betwixt my teeth only this morning.”
The woman looked at him and nodded gravely. There was nothing in her face that showed his speech particularly interested her. And yet, in wide ignorance of facts, Sim had spoken words that might some day lead to his discomfiture and ruin. For he had lied, and Mrs Sweetland knew it.
He drank, talked on and suggested in his speech and ideas a man of simple rectitude and honourable mind. His admiration for Minnie he made no attempt to conceal. It presently fired Mrs Beer into a rather personal remark.
“Lord! what a couple you’d make!” she said, eying them. “I do hope, to say it without rudeness, as you’ll see your way, my dear; for Titus here be cut out for you; an’ everybody be of the same opinion. When a man’s saved enough to open a publichouse, that man’s a right to look high for his partner, and he has a right to the respect of us females. Take the case of my Beer. He waited, so patient as Job, till the critical cash was to his name in the Bank at Moreton. Then he flinged over service as gardener up to Archerton and lifted his eyes to me; but not afore he’d got three figures to his name. An’ we all know that Mr Sim be a very snug man.”
“I won’t deny it,” said Titus. “’Twould be idle to do so. I am a snug man as young men go. The guests at Middlecott are generous, and five pound notes soon mount up. But we mustn’t talk of that. Mrs Sweetland hopes that my poor friend and her dear husband be still in the land of the living. And, though it cuts the ground from beneath me, I hope so too. Have ’e heard ’bout drunkard Parkinson? They say he’s not likely to get over his last bout. Now there’s a man famed for poaching since his childhood, and as clever at it as any chap ever I heard of. It strikes me that he knows a lot more than his fellow creatures have heard him speak. Anyway, I’m going to see him to-morrow, if he’s well enough to see me. He’s not above a bit of sport by night still, though I guess he’s shot his last bird now, poor chap! Put a gun in that man’s hand, and he is sober in a minute. ’Tis an instinct with him.”
Minnie listened and said nothing. She appeared to be working on a piece of red flannel, but in reality her mind and attention were elsewhere. She had private reasons for a close personal scrutiny of Titus, and now, from under veiled lids, observed his every action, his dress, his speech.
The man clearly endured physical pain from time to time. He moved his right shoulder gingerly and occasionally, forgetting it, puckered his mouth into the expressions of suffering, when a twinge reminded him of his accident. He was clad in an old shooting jacket and breeches, the gift of one of his master’s guests at the end of a shooting season. One leg was torn and the rent had been carefully drawn together. His gaiters were fastened with yellow horn buttons; but upon the right leg a button was missing. It had, however, been replaced with a black one.
Sim smoked and finished his cider; then he loaded his pipe again, talked ten minutes longer and prepared to depart.
“I was forgetting,” he said. “Mrs Sweetland, at the lodge, sent a special message by me. She wants for you to come down and take supper along with her to-morrow. And she was so kind as to ask me also. And I said as I would do it and be proud to see you home after, if agreeable to you.”
“I’ll come gladly. I shall be at Moreton to-morrow. My fowls have beginned to lay finely, an’ I hope to have a dozen eggs for market.”