“Then, good-morning.”
Distin walked away with his head up, and a nonchalant expression on his countenance, leaving the constable looking after him.
“Want to ask me any more questions, constable,” he said, mimicking Distin’s manner. “Then good-morning.”
He stood frowning for a few minutes, and nodded his head decisively.
“Well,” he said, “you’re a gentleman, I suppose, and quite a scholard, or you wouldn’t be at parson’s, but if you aren’t about as artful as they make ’em, I’m as thick-headed as a beetle. Poor lad! Only a sort o’ foreigner, I suppose. What a blessing it is to be born a solid Englishman. Not as I’ve got a word again your Irishman and Scotchman, or your Welsh, if it comes to that, but what can you expect of a lad born out in a hot climate that aren’t good for nobody but blacks?”
He took a piece of string out of his pocket, and very carefully tied the trowel and pieces of broken stick together as firmly as if they were to be despatched on a long journey. Then he opened the basket, peeped in, and frowned at the truffles, closed it up and went out.
“Any of you as likes can go in now,” he said, and shaking his head solemnly as questions began to pour upon him from all sides respecting the stick and basket, he strode off with his colleague in the direction of the town, gaining soon upon the rector, who was too tired and faint to walk fast, for it was not his habit to pass the night out of bed, and take a walk of some hours’ duration at early dawn.