Rhoda was ready for him and they set off together up the valley. From his cottage door David watched them and smiled grimly. His sister had not mentioned her appointment, and both Margaret and her husband were exceedingly surprised.
"It can't surely be that poor Mr. Snell--?" said Madge.
"Anything can be," he answered; "but 'tis hard to believe. On the whole--no. It amounts to nought. Look at the way Simon carries his legs--that loose from the thigh--that loose and wandering, as though they belonged to a Guy Fawkes!"
"'Tis a most amazing thing, David, what different sort of people sometimes have something in 'em that draws them together willy-nilly. But Hartley!"
"'Tis no good looking that way," he answered with decision. "I sounded her as to the man a bit ago, as I promised. She's got no fancy that way, Madge, and the sooner he knows it the sooner he'll stop wasting his time."
Meanwhile Mr. Snell walked beside Rhoda and talked of the amazing number of water rats in the leat. Presently he lifted the theme to poultry, and then, returning to the water, detailed the exact manner of his professional labours. She said little but listened to his statement of facts. His mind was only constituted to assert crude happenings. He had no ideas, no theories, and few opinions.
"You can see the tower of Princetown church very clear from here," he said; "but if a mist comed over, it would be hidden."
She admitted that this was so.
"A gentleman stopped in our best bedroom and parlour a year back," continued Simon; "and his custom was to paint pickshers. And once I comed this way and he was painting pretty near where we be standing now. And I made so bold as to look, and then I made so bold as to talk, because the gentleman axed me what I thought of it. 'You've left out the church tower,' I says to him. 'Yes,' he says, ''twasn't like I was going to stick such a beastly, ugly thing as that in the middle of they hills.' So he left it out, though to my eye 'twas the most interesting sight to be seen."
"Did he make his pickshers for pleasure, or did he get anything by them?" asked Rhoda.