“Course he is; look at the tears in his eyes.”
“Hey, mun, why don’t you say you’re glad to see us?”
“And why don’t you speak?”
“Because,” said John Maine, speaking slowly, as he stopped leaning on his thick staff in the middle of the road, “I’m not glad to see you, and I don’t want to speak.”
He looked very stern and uncompromising this young man, half bailiff, half farm servant in appearance, as he stood there in the lane, about a mile from Joe Banks’s house, and facing the men who had kept up the conversational duet, for they were about as ill-looking a pair of scoundrels as a traveller was likely to meet in a day’s march.
The elder of the two carried a common whip, and wore a long garment, half jacket, half vest in appearance, inasmuch as it was backed and sleeved with greasy fustian, and faced with greasy scarlet and purple plush, hanging low over his tightly-fitting cord trousers, buttoned at the ankles over heavy boots, while his head was covered with a ragged fur cap.
The younger man, whose hair was very short, wore the ordinary smock-frock euphoniously termed a “cow-gown,” but as he was journeying, it was tucked up round his hips. This, with his soft wide-awake, and heavy unlaced boots, was bucolic enough, but there the rustic aspect ceased, for his face was sallow; he had a slovenly tied cotton handkerchief round his neck; and as he smoked a dirty, short clay pipe, he had more the aspect of a Whitechapel or Sheffield rough than the ordinary farming man of the country.
Taking them together, they seemed to be men who could manage a piece of horse-stealing, poach, rob a hen-roost, or pay a visit night or day to any unprotected house; and if “gaol” was not stamped legibly on each face, it was because nature could not write it any plainer than she had.
“He’s gotten high in the instep, Ike,” said the last man; “and what’s he got to be proud on?”
“Ah, to be sure, what’s he got to be proud on?” chuckled the other. “He wasn’t always a stuck up one, was he?”