“I'm sure you won't mind touching your hat when they make their little curtsies, or when a villager touches his forehead,” she said.
“Good Lord! no,” he said, starting. “Ought I? I didn't know they were doing it at me.” And he turned round and made a handsome bow and grinned almost affectionately at the small, amazed party, first puzzling, and then delighting, them, because he looked so extraordinarily friendly. A gentleman who laughed at you like that ought to be equal to a miscellaneous distribution of pennies in the future, if not on the spot. They themselves grinned and chuckled and nudged one another, with stares and giggles.
“I am sorry to say that in a great many places the villagers are not nearly so respectful as they used to be,” Miss Alicia explained. “In Rowcroft the children were very remiss about curtseying. It's quite sad. But Mr. Temple Barholm was very strict indeed in the matter of demanding proper respectfulness. He has turned men off their farms for incivility. The villagers of Temple Barholm have much better manners than some even a few miles away.”
“Must I tip my hat to all of them?” he asked.
“If you please. It really seems kinder. You—you needn't quite lift it, as you did to the children just now. If you just touch the brim lightly with your hand in a sort of military salute—that is what they are accustomed to.”
After they had passed through the village street she paused at the end of a short lane and looked up at him doubtfully.
“Would you—I wonder if you would like to go into a cottage,” she said.
“Go into a cottage?” he asked. “What cottage? What for?”
He had not the remotest idea of any reason why he should go into a cottage inhabited by people who were entire strangers to him, and Miss Alicia felt a trifle awkward at having to explain anything so wholly natural.
“You see, they are your cottages, and the people are your tenants, and—”