“I’ve been watching your show,” Maradick said, “and enjoyed it more than many a play I’ve seen in town.”
“Yes, it went well to-night,” Punch said, “and there was a new baby. It’s surprisin’ what difference a new baby makes, even Toby notices it.”
“A new baby?” asked Maradick.
“Yes. A baby, you know, that ’asn’t seen the show before, leastways in this world. You can always tell by the way they take it.” Then he added politely, “And I hope you like this town, sir.”
“Enormously,” Maradick answered. “I think it has some quality, something that makes it utterly different from anywhere else that I know. There is a feeling——”
He looked across the market-place, and, through the cleft between the ebony black of the towering walls, there shone the bluest of evening skies, and across the space floated a pink cushion of a cloud; towards the bend of the green hill on the horizon the sky where the sun was setting was a bed of primroses. “It is a wonderful place.”
“Ah, I tell you sir,” said Punch, stroking one of Toby’s ears, “there’s no place like it. . . . I’ve been in every town in this kingdom, and some of them are good enough. But this!”
He looked at Maradick a moment and then he said, “Forgive my mentioning it, sir, but you’ve got the feeling of the place; you’ve caught the spirit, as one might say. We watch, folks down here, you strangers up there at the ‘Man at Arms.’ For the most part they miss it altogether. They come for the summer with their boxes and their bags, they bathe in the sea, they drive on the hill, and they’re gone. Lord love you, why they might have been sleepin’.” He spat contemptuously.
“But you think that I have it?” said Maradick.
“You’ve got it right enough,” said Punch. “But then you’re a friend of young Mr. Gale’s, and so you couldn’t help having it; ’e’s got it more than anyone I ever knew.”