She declared, at times, that he was enough to “mak’ t’ flesh creep up yan’s back to think on,” but he paid her five shillings a week, and as money was scarce in the Braithwaite household, and the work to be done at Skirle Cottage occupied only half an hour or so a day, she kept on with the job.
There was, besides the money, a sort of eerie fascination about the stranger that was not entirely distasteful to the old lady’s heart.
Once, a small boy named Britten, greatly daring, had peeped through the window at the ogre. The door opened and the ogre came out, and Britten ran, returning home drenched, and with the following lucid description of the incident and the cause of his wetting. “He chased me an’ I rin, ah catcht mi teea ower a cobble and down ah went, end-ower-end inta the beck.” So it was not surprising that Bob Lewthwaite, seeing Sir Anthony Gyde going in to the ogre’s cottage and the door closing upon him, waited, forgetting everything else in the world, to see what was going to happen.
He waited a long time, nearly three-quarters of an hour, then the door opened and Sir Anthony Gyde came out.
He was carrying a black bag in his hand.
He closed the door and looked around him, just as he had done before entering. Satisfied, apparently, that he was unobserved, he came down the valley towards the road, got into the motor-car and drove off.
CHAPTER IX
SIR ANTHONY GYDE was a fearless horseman, but a somewhat timid motorist, as motorists go.
He drove carefully, rarely exceeding fifteen miles an hour.