“Where can I get something to eat, then?” said the visitor, feeling half amused, his difficulty with Hazel passing rapidly away.
“Somut to ee-yut. Why don’t yer go ho-um?”
“Hang the boy! Oh, here’s the round-faced chap. I beg your pardon, can you direct me to the best hotel?”
“Straight past the church, sir, and round into the market-place.”
“Thanks; I can get some lunch or dinner there, I suppose?”
“Ye-es,” said Mr William Forth Burge. “I should think so.”
“I came down from town by the mail last night, and walked over from Burtwick this morning. Strange in the place, you see.”
“May I offer you a bit of dinner, sir? I know London well, though I’m a native here, and as a friend of our new schoolmistress—”
“Oh, I should hardly like to intrude,” cried the young man apologetically.
“Pray come,” said the ex-butcher eagerly, for he longed to get the young man under his roof. He did not know why: in fact he felt almost hurt at his coming there that morning; and again, he did not know why, but he knew one thing, and that was that he would have given ten pounds that moment to know why Archibald Graves had come down that day, and what he said to Miss Thorne, and—yes, he would have given twenty pounds to know what Hazel Thorne said to him.