"I'm good enough for the wage I get," growled Belk, sulkily; "if Sir Rupert meddles with me, he'll get the worst of it; I'll stand no man's handling, d----n me if I do."
He thrust his hands into his pockets and strolled off defiantly.
"Where are you going, lad?" asked his mother, as he paused at the gate.
"To 'The Badger,'" retorted Mr. Belk, curtly, and hurriedly retreated so as to escape his parent's expostulations.
"The lad's always there," said Mrs. Belk to herself as she closed the door; "he's after no good I reckon. Eh, if I could only get some money, I'd march him off to America, where he could live like a gentleman. But there's no chance of that while rich folk have the handling of the money."
Meanwhile, Mrs. Belswin was walking rapidly back to the house, thinking over the curious couple she had just left.
"Not a bit like the ordinary people," she thought. "The mother's not to be trusted except as concerns the son, and the son--well, he's discontented with his lot. I wonder if Rupert finds him a good servant. He must, or he wouldn't keep him on. But if Mr. Samson Belk tries any games on with his master, I think he'll get the worst of it."
"Good-day, Mrs. Belswin."
It was Gelthrip, the curate, who saluted her, a lank lean man, with a hatchet face, lantern-jawed, and clean shaven, not by any means what the world would term handsome. Dressed in black he looked like a crow, and his hoarse voice--for he suffered from clergyman's soar throat--was not unlike the cawing of those dreary birds. He was a gossip, and very inquisitive. He supported a sick sister, and professed High Church principles, and it was lucky that he should have vowed himself to celibacy, for certainly no woman would have taken him as her husband. He had long bony hands, and cracked his knuckles in order to punctuate his sentences, and he talked without ceasing, mixing up religion, gossip, literature, music, art, and science in one heterogeneous mass of chatter.
Having drawn the cork of his eloquence by saying Good-day, and touching his low-crowned hat, Mr. Gelthrip cracked his knuckles cheerfully, and poured forth a flood of aimless nonsense.