"Meaning no offence, Mr. Lummax—me that hes known ye, man an' boy, these thirty year. But he's getting forrarder i' drink, is Joe, an' there comes a time when drink 'ull mak th' softest mammy's lad i' th' land shape courageous-like. He's a wind-bag, says t' others; but I've getten my own notions about that, an' he swears at ye summat fearful, sir, nowadays—says he'll hev your life; an' a mak o' foul-mouthed words he's getten to say it in. I'd advise ye to hev a care, an' that's what I set out to tell ye, sir."
"It's good of you to bother, Crabtree—but you can trust me to look after myself. Good day."
"Short an' sharp, as th' gentry allus is when their women-folk is in case. Nay, nay, they're kittle cattle, is women, an' kittle they mak their men; an' I should hev a right to know," muttered Crabtree, as he strolled into the kitchen to watch the fourth of his wives rolling out the dough for a gooseberry-pasty.
Griff went straight back to the Manor, his good spirits restored now that he had made up his mind how to act. But he said nothing of his resolve, and merely told his mother, when mare Lassie and he set off after breakfast the next morning, that he had to go to Saxilton on business. His destination was a certain office, half-way up the narrow main street of Saxilton, which had been given at the bottom of the poster as the address of the trustees of the late Thomas Widdop's estate. Griff, though he knew there was a reckoning in store for him, felt something of a lad's blithe glee in truantry as he rode down the trough of the valley, and up the other side, and down again till he came to the wood-road that lies between Saxilton and Plover Court, where old Squire Daneholme lived. The air was moist and kindly, and the young green things were sprouting up through the withered leaves of the under-brush: cock-pheasants were exhibiting their charms to admiring wives in many a glade of the open park-land that divided the woods here and there; weasels and stoats kept peeping at him from clefts in the mossy walls, and squirrels lay flat along their tree-branches at his approach, in a well-feigned stiffness that was suggestive of death. Griff laughed as he passed the sweep of sandy carriage-drive that struck up the hill to Plover Court.
"You gave me a merry time not long since, Squire. Shall I take you at your word, and drop in to dinner to-night?" he thought.
And no sooner had he turned the corner where the highway runs over the river-bridge and past the corn-mill, than whom should he meet but the bluff old Squire himself, coming cantering home on a chestnut thoroughbred. Griff saluted him merrily with his whip at his cap, and the Squire pulled up.
"You're young Lomax, aren't you? We've met before, I fancy."
"We have. I hope you were no worse, sir, for the meeting?"
"Worse for it? No, you young sinner; it did me good, after my jaws unstiffened enough to let me eat. Your face was scratched a bit, by the way, wasn't it?"