“Well, perhaps you’re right, Maine,” said the vicar. “Well, Mr Bultitude, we don’t get over our strike.”
“Parson, it makes me wild,” said the old man. “I can’t bear it, and I shall be glad—strange and glad to see it over; for I hate to see a pack of men standing about the town doing o’ nowt. Can’t you do owt wi’ the works people?”
The vicar shook his head. “I’ve tried both ways—hard,” he said; “master and men, but no good comes of it.”
While this conversation was going on, Jessie had stepped anxiously forward, and laid her hand upon John Maine’s arm.
“Is anything serious the matter, John?” she said anxiously. “Are you very ill?”
He started when she touched him as if he had been stung, and withdrew his arm hastily; and then, without so much as a glance at the girl’s earnest, appealing eyes, he turned away and followed the vicar down the path, for he had shaken hands and parted from the farmer.
“I’ll see you across the home close, sir,” said John Maine.
“Thank you, do,” said the vicar; “but I think your bull pretty well knows me now. Hallo! here comes Mr Brough, the Squire’s keeper, with his black looks and black whiskers. He always looks at me as if he thought I had designs on the squire’s game. Hallo! Maine, bad friends? What does that mean?” he continued, as the man gave him a surly salute and then passed on, gun over shoulder, bestowing upon the young bailiff a sneering, half-savage look that was full of meaning.
“Tom Brough has never been very good friends with me, sir, since I thrashed him for annoying Miss Jessie there, up at the farm.”
“Seems as if his love has not yet returned,” said the vicar, as he strode away, thinking of the various little plots and by-plots going on in his neighbourhood; and then sighing deeply as he felt that there was trouble in store for himself, in spite of his stern discipline and busy efforts to keep his mind too much employed to think of the countenance that haunted his dreams.