“Garth’s right, after all,” murmured one farm-man to the other behind his hand. “Them turkeys will be penned afore, or a lile while after, the next breeding-time.”
“What’s that ye’re saying?” roared Hirst, turning on the whispering pair.
“Nay, naught—just naught at all.”
“Well, ye’d better not say it just now, all the same. David, I fair hate to be beaten by a job! Let’s rive it down, and bundle it into a corner, and have done wi’ it. Garth notions will be good enough for me in future, I warrant ye.”
David, too, was nettled, for it was seldom he went wrong in anything concerned with handicraft. “Comes o’ bringing foreign truck into Garth Valley,” he growled. “Why ye and me should take to handling such outlandish stuff at our time o’ life, Farmer, is more than I can tell.”
The gate of the croft was opened quietly, and Billy the Fool sauntered idly towards them. The natural gave no hint, in look or bearing, of the woful trouble he had caused himself and Cilla up yonder on the brink of the wooded hollow.
“Now, good day, misters all!” was his greeting, as he slouched up, his hands thrust listlessly into the pockets of his ancient trousers. “’Tis what Billy the Fool would call a fine evening for the time o’ year; and yet there’s somewhat cold, and wet, and sharp, blowing up from Easterby Hill.”
“Tuts!” said Yeoman Hirst. “Ye’re as wise as a fox when it’s scenting a hen-house, Billy; but this weather is nailed to the sky, I tell ye, and won’t shift for a brace o’ weeks.”
“Te-he,” answered Billy amicably. “I’m just telling ye what I think myself—what I smell i’ my nostrils, like—but I was never one to guess what my betters were thinking. Now, masters. I’ve been wondering.”
“Tell us, then,” said Hirst.