"It's lucky you hadn't engaged a boy," said Mrs. Tyler, looking keenly at her husband as she spoke; "for if you had, there's no telling but what you might think of keeping the two, soft as you are; but I asked Marple if you had been after his Jack."
"I should want a boy a long time before I took Jack Marple," interrupted Tyler, with some spirit; "but all the same, I have engaged a boy. Widow Hunter's son is a decent lad."
"The witch-wife's boy?" almost screamed Mrs. Tyler.
"Nobody can prove she was a witch, any more than they can prove she was a Methodist," said Tyler angrily. Though, as he thought of Eric's talk, he feared the latter charge would be easy enough of proof, and he decided to give the boy a word of warning to keep all such thoughts to himself for the future.
Fortunately for the landlord, customers arrived the next minute, and so he left his wife to exhaust her grumbling on Betty, while he went to the cellar to draw the cider that had been called for, and to ascertain whether the visitors who had just alighted from a post-chaise would want dinner prepared for them.
That his services should be required so soon was a real grievance to old Toby, who had seated himself in a sunny corner of the gateway, with a fixed determination that he would not move again until he went home at night, when this obnoxious chaise arrived; and the occupants were so inconsiderate as to say that they were going to spend some hours in the forest, and would want the horse fed and rubbed down, and the chaise looked over, as one wheel had sunk in the rutty road rather deeper than usual.
To hear the old man's grumbling maledictions on all strangers who came to Summerleigh annoyed the landlord, and seeing Eric pass down the road, he called to him.
"Are you busy just now, my lad?" he said, when Eric came up.
"No; I'm only going to see if parson is at home, to tell him about mother," he replied.
"Well, I can tell you that parson went to London three days ago, and won't be back for another week; but Mr. Jackson is going to see about your mother's funeral. He is a friend of mine," added Tyler.