He had to explain that he wasn’t begging. ‘Can you give us a bit of breakfast, missis,’ he said, ‘I can pay for it.’ He showed her one of his sovereigns.
She looked him up and down incredulously, and then said: ‘Come on in and set yourself in the tap. Better leave the dog outside, or my Betsy’ll have his eyes out.’ Her Betsy, a big, black tom-cat, too rashly christened in his first days of innocence, was already arching a back more like that of a geometer caterpillar than a cat. ‘She can’t abear them if she don’t know them,’ said the landlady. ‘Once she knows them she’ll lie in their arms like a child.’
Abner left Tiger whining outside the door, and the landlady, now satisfied that he wasn’t as rough as he looked, was heard shouting orders to Emily in the kitchen. A smell of frizzling bacon came down the passage.
Abner settled himself on an oak bench. This taproom was very different from that of the Royal Oak. The floor was of big, uneven stone flags and all the furniture was black and shiny with centuries of use. The place did not smell, as did the Halesby pubs, of stale spirits and tobacco. It was as sweet as they were sour. Agricultural almanacs and signed photographs of memorable meets hung on the walls, and over the mantelpiece a number of cards recorded the fees and procreative achievements of shire stallions. Abner was nearly asleep when the landlady herself appeared with a plate of bacon and eggs and a pot of tea.
‘There now, how will that do you?’ she said.
Abner started to eat and she sat and watched him, apologising once more for her first reception. ‘We have to be careful, you see. What with all this unemployment there seems to be more tramps on the road summer-time than ever there was. In winter they dies off like the flies. Dad says they come and go with the swallers. That’s a lovely bit of bacon.’
It became evident from her conversation that she was curious to know what Abner was doing. She could see that his clothes were decent and that he wore a silver watch-chain, but hinted that she couldn’t understand the battered state of his face. He told her that he had had an accident.
‘There now!’ she said. ‘They always go in threes, and bless me if yours ain’t the third I’ve come across this week. Have a drop more tea?’—she poured it—‘Which way are you going, then? If you’d been a bit earlier dad could have give you a lift.’
Abner told her that he was looking for work, asked her if she could help him to find it.
‘You’re not a farming man,’ she said, ‘and it’s all farmering hereabouts.’