It had occurred to Mr Robins' mind, in the waking moments of that restless night, that there might have been—nay, most probably was—some mark on the child's clothes which would lead to its identification, and, for the next few days, every glance in his direction, or, for the matter of that, in any other direction, was interpreted by him as having some covert allusion to this foundling grandchild of his; but the conversation of some men outside his yew-hedge, which he accidentally overheard one day, set his anxiety at rest.
From this he gathered that it was generally supposed to be a child belonging to a gypsy caravan that had passed through the village that day.
'And I says,' said one of the men with that slow, emphatic delivery in which the most ordinary sentiments are given forth as if they were wisdom unheard and undreamt of before; 'and I don't mind who hears me, as Gray did oughter set the perlice on to 'un to find the heartless jade as did 'un.'
'Ay, sure! so he did oughter; but he ain't on gumption, Gray ain't; never had neither, as have known him man and boy these fifty year.'
'My missus says,' went on the first speaker, 'as she seed a gypsy gal with just such a brat as this on her arm. She come round to parson's back door—my Liza's kitchen gal there and telled her mother. She were one of them dressed-up baggages with long earrings and a yeller handkercher round her head, a-telling fortunes; coming round the poor, silly gals with her long tongue and sly ways. She went in here, too.' Mr Robins guessed, though he could not see the jerk of the thumb in his direction. 'Mrs Sands told me so herself—the organist's listening was quickened to yet sharper attention—'she says she had quite a job to get rid of her, and thought she were after the spoons belike. But she says as she'd know the gal again anywheres, and my missus says she'd pretty near take her davy to the child, though as I says, one brat's pretty much like another—haw, haw! though the women don't think it.'
And the two men parted, laughing over this excellent joke.
It was most curious how that little out-of-the-way house of the Grays and its unremarkable inmates had suddenly become conspicuous; the very cottage was visible from all directions—from the churchyard gate, from the organist's garden, from various points along the Stokeley road; but perhaps this may have been because Mr Robins had never cared to identify one thatched roof from another hitherto. As for the Grays, they seemed to be everywhere; that man hoeing in the turnip-field was Gray, that boy at the head of the team in the big yellow wagon was Tom, and Bill seemed to be all over the place, whistling along the road or running round the corner, or waiting to change his book at the organist's gate. If Mr Clifford spoke to Mr Robins it was about something to do with the Grays, and even Mr Wilson of Stokeley stopped him in the road to ask if some people called Gray lived at Downside. It was most extraordinary how these people, so insignificant a week ago, were now brought into prominence.
Even before Mr Robins had overheard that conversation he had had a fidgety sort of wish to go up to the Grays' cottage, and now he made a pretext of asking for a book he had lent Bill, but went before the school came out, so that only Mrs Gray was at home as he opened the gate and went up the path.
It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, and Mrs Gray was sitting outside the door, making, plain as she was, a pretty picture with the shadows of the young vine-leaves over the door dappling her print gown and apron and the baby's little dark head and pink pinafore, a garment that had once been Bill's, who had been of a more robust build than this baby, and moreover, had worn the pinafore at a more advanced age, so that the fit left a good deal to be desired, and the colour had suffered in constant visits to the wash-tub, and was not so bright as it had been originally.
But altogether, the faded pinafore and the vine-leaf shadows, and the love in the woman's face, made a harmonious whole, and the song she was singing, without a note of sweetness or tune in it, did not jar on the organist's ear, as you might have supposed, knowing his critical and refined taste.