Mr. Snell was engaged upon the Plymouth water leat. His neighbours regarded him as a harmless joke. It might have been said of him, as of the owl, that he was not humourous himself, but the cause of humour in others.
"I always think there's a lot of sense hidden in Simon, for all you men laugh at him," said Margaret.
"Then give up thinking so," answered Bartley, "for you're wrong. That baby-eyed creature have just brain-power to keep him out of the lunatic asylum and no more. His head is as empty as a deaf nut. He's never growed up. There's nought behind that great bush of a beard but a stupid child. He's only the image of a man; and you'll never hear him say a sensible thing, unless 'tis the echo of somebody else. He don't know no more about human creatures than that gate."
"A childlike spirit have its own virtues. He'd never do a bad thing."
"He'd never do anything--good or bad. He's like a ploughing horse or a machine. Lord, the times I've tried to shock a swear or surprise a laugh out of that chap! Yet if ever Rhoda Bowden showed me a spark of herself, 'twas when I said I thought Simon was after her red sister."
"'Twas only because you angered her thinking of such a thing."
"How d'you like David Bowden?" he asked suddenly, and the question signified much to them both. For Bartley had been not a little astonished to hear that David was going to drink tea at Coombeshead. The eldest son of Elias was an unsociable man and little given to visiting. Yet this visit, as Mr. Crocker had observed after church, meant a good deal to young Bowden. Now he desired to know what it might mean to Margaret.
Her merry manner changed and a nervousness, natural to her and never far from the surface of her character, asserted itself.
"What a chap you are for sudden questions that go off like a rat-trap! Mr. David is coming to drink tea along with us to-night."
"That's why you're in such a hurry."