"Well, you may be straight," answered the other with a laugh. "Certainly you've never been known yet to bend your shoulders to work. A day's trout-fishing be the hardest job that ever you've taken on—unless courting the maidens be a hard job."
Ned laughed and so did his uncle.
"You're right there, Heathman," declared Mr. Baskerville. "A lazy scamp you are, Ned, though your father won't see it; but nobody knows it better than the girls. They like you very well for a fine day and a picnic by the river; but I can tell you this: they're getting to see through you only too well. They don't want fair-weather husbands; but stout, hard fellows, like Heathman here, as have got brains and use 'em, and arms and legs and use 'em."
"No more use—you, than a pink and white china joney stuck on a mantelshelf," said Heathman. Whereupon Ned dashed at him and, half in jest, half in earnest, they wrestled by the roadside. Mr. Baskerville looked on with great enjoyment, and helped presently to dust Heathman after he had been cross-buttocked.
"That'll show 'e if I'm a pink and white puppet for a mantelpiece," declared Ned.
The other laughed and licked a scratch on his hand.
"Well done you!" he said. "Never thought you was so spry. But let's have a whole day's ploughing over a bit of the five-acre field to Undershaugh, and see what sort of a man you are in the evening."
"Not me," answered the other. "Got no use for the plough-tail myself. Rupert will take you on at that."
"To see you wrestle puts me in mind of your father," said Nathan. "This generation can't call home his greatness, and beside him you're a shrimp to a lobster, Ned; but 'twas a grand sight to see him handle a man in his prime. I mind actually getting him up to London once, because I named his name there among some sporting fellows and 'twas slighted. They thought, being my brother, that I held him too high, though he was champion of Devon at the time. But my way is never to say nought with my tongue that I won't back with my pocket, and I made a match for thirty pounds a side for your father. A Middlesex man called Thorpe, from down Bermondsey way, was chosen, and your father came up on a Friday and put that chap on his back twice in five minutes, and then went home again fifteen pound to the good. A very clever man too, was Thorpe, but he never wanted to have no more to do with your father. Vivian weighed over fourteen stone in them days, and not a pound of fat in the lot, I believe. He could have throwed down a tor, I reckon, if he could have got a hold on it. But you fellows be after your mother's build. The best of you—him that's at sea—won't never draw the beam to twelve stone."
A tramp stopped Mr. Baskerville, touched his hat and spoke.