“Ar, if he’d paid them they wouldn’t have minded so much.”
To which the other answered:
“Ar, ’tisn’t only the paying: it’s always an awkward thing when a man dies in your house, specially if it’s licensed. My wife’s brother was caught that way.”
Then as they went on talking we found that they were talking of the man in the inn, who it seems had not slept very long, but was dead, and had died in that same room. It was a shocking thing to hear. The first farmer said to the second in the railway carriage when we had all got in:
“Where’d he come from?”
The other, who was an old man, grinned and said:
“Where we all come from, I suppose, and where we all go to.” He touched his forehead with his hand. “He said he’d come from the End of the World.”
“Ar,” said the other gloomily in answer, “like enough!” And after that they talked no more about the matter.
[1] The Rhododendrons on the great lawn are modern.