And now brisk footsteps were heard upon the road outside the entrance gates. In a moment more these were pushed open with a rattle, and Tumpany swung in humming a little tune.
Tumpany was a shortish thick-set man of fifty, with a red clean-shaven face. He walked with his body bent forward, his arms hanging at his sides, and always seemed about to break into a short run. It was five years since he had retired even from the coast-guard, but Royal Navy was written large all over him, and would be until he tossed off his last pint of beer and sailed away to Fidler's Green—"Nine miles to windward of Hell," as he loved to explain to the housemaid and the cook.
Tumpany's wife kept a small shop in the village, and he himself did the boots and knives, cleaned Gilbert's guns and went wild-fowling with him in the winter, was the more immediate Providence of the Dog Trust, and generally a most important and trusted person in the little household of the Poet.
There was an almost exaggerated briskness in Tumpany's walk and manner as he turned into the kitchen. Blanche, the housemaid, was now "doing" the dining-room, in the interior of the house, but Phoebe, the cook—a stalwart lass of three and twenty—had just got the fire to her liking and was giving a finishing touch of polish to the range.
"Morning, my girl!" said Tumpany in a bluff, cheery voice.
Phoebe did not answer, but went on polishing the handle of the oven door.
He repeated the salutation, a shade less confidently.
The girl gave a final leisurely twist of the leather, surveyed her work critically for a moment, and then rose to her feet.
"There are them knives," she said shortly, pointing to a basket upon the table, "and the boots is in the back kitchen."
"You needn't be so short with a man, Phoebe."