His fingers opened and shut maliciously, he nodded dour assent. After an instant, while he watched her, she added: “Thee has not heard my lord is to marry?”
“Marry—who is the blind lass?”
“Her name is Maryon, Miss Hylda Maryon: and she has a great fortune. But within a month it is to be.”
“Thee remembers the woman of the cross-roads, her that our Davy—”
“Her the Egyptian kissed, and put his watch in her belt—ay, Kate Heaver!”
“She is now maid to her Lord Eglington will wed. She is to spend to-night with us.”
“Where is her lad that was, that the Egyptian rolled like dough in a trough?”
“Jasper Kimber? He is at Sheffield. He has been up and down, now sober for a year, now drunken for a month, now in, now out of a place, until this past year. But for this whole year he has been sober, and he may keep his pledge. He is working in the trades-unions. Among his fellow-workers he is called a politician—if loud speaking and boasting can make one. Yet if these doings give him stimulant instead of drink, who shall complain?”
Soolsby’s head was down. He was looking out over the far hills, while the strips of cane were idle in his hands. “Ay, ‘tis true—‘tis true,” he nodded. “Give a man an idee which keeps him cogitating, makes him think he’s greater than he is, and sets his pulses beating, why, that’s the cure to drink. Drink is friendship and good company and big thoughts while it lasts; and it’s lonely without it, if you’ve been used to it. Ay, but Kimber’s way is best. Get an idee in your noddle, to do a thing that’s more to you than work or food or bed, and ‘twill be more than drink, too.”
He nodded to himself, then began weaving the strips of cane furiously. Presently he stopped again, and threw his head back with a chuckle. “Now, wouldn’t it be a joke, a reg’lar first-class joke, if Kimber and me both had the same idee, if we was both workin’ for the same thing—an’ didn’t know it? I reckon it might be so.”