“Might as well be wending down-street way,” he said at last, shaking himself as he stood upright and knocking out the ashes from his pipe. “Terrible lad to smoke is Billy, and I feel the need of another pipeful, as a chap might say. Will go and sit on the seat, under the old elm tree, and happen a body’s body might come along and offer me a fill.”
The big tree in the roadway, fronting the inn to which it gave its name, was browning fast, in token of green leaves to come. The wide circle of the street here, where three roads met, was shimmering in the sunshine as if new-washed and wholesome.
“Terrible fond of a seat is this plump lad,” murmured Billy, sinking carefully into the oaken bench that circled the great elm.
He sat there, empty pipe in mouth, and he watched young April glow upon the inn-front and the further hills behind. Great faith had Billy, and therefore great tranquillity; and, though he hungered for another pipe, he sat beneath the elm tree, as if tobacco fell, as dew falls, from the skies of eventide.
As he waited, noting lazily for the twentieth time that the wagtails had returned to Garth and were dusting themselves in the roadway, Reuben Gaunt came down the street. The natural saw him—scented him rather, so it seemed—a hundred yards away; and he shifted the empty pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other, and gripped it with his teeth.
“Hallo, Billy, give you good day!” said Gaunt, as he came nearer. It was Reuben’s way at all times to conciliate a fool, if he were strong and liable to play Fool’s-Day jests with a man by dropping him into a nettle-bed. “Give you good day, Billy. An empty pipe, eh? Well, I’ve a full pouch at your service.”
Billy yearned for another fill and another borrowed match wherewith to light it; and they thought him weak of will in Garth, but now he looked over and beyond the tempter.
“Thank ye, no. I’ve smoked enough for a daft boy’s head-piece to withstand that same,” he said, with the courtesy which seldom failed him. “I be looking at the springtime gathering over Garth, Mr. Gaunt, and I do seem, as a witless chap might say, to have scant thought for baccy.”
“But a right good brew of ale?” suggested Gaunt, nodding at the grey and newly pointed front of the Elm Tree Inn. Like a child, Reuben was always most eager to have his way when he was thwarted. “A right good brew of ale, Billy? You like it, so they say, and have a head to stand it, too.”
A second and an equal temptation came to Billy the Fool. He was silent for awhile, and turned the matter round about in that queer mind of his.