Which shows once more how unexpectedly much, and how wonderfully little, everybody knows about everybody else.
CHAPTER XIX
If Andy had been a woman, gall would have been added to his sorrow by the sympathetic package of sandwiches which Mrs. Jebb put into the pony-cart, and by the carelessly careful remark which Sam Petch made, glancing after the departing flutter of her skirts, that women seemed to have no sense, even the best of them, but that there was one comfort, nobody need grieve over any of them, because there were always as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.
However, being a man, Andy did not notice these indications of a knowledge that he had gone fishing on the matrimonial shore to come back with an empty basket. And he watched some apples being placed in the cart for his friend the Millsby joiner, whom he had once fought, without any of the intense, nervous irritation which must have followed a woman’s intuitive discovery that she was being pitied and watched by those about her.
The piebald pony went off, as gay as a little pony can be who has a comfortable stable and plenty to eat and very little to do; but deep within his heart lurked the memory of past excitements, and he was trotting decorously through Millsby, every inch the parson’s pony, when he heard a brass band playing the Ancient Order of Buffaloes into their annual festivities, and he forgot everything but that he was an artiste with a suppressed talent for dancing on his hind legs.
And as the artistic temperament—even in ponies—always brings inconveniences upon those nearest the gifted one, it is not surprising that Andy found himself in the road among a heap of apples with a few ham-sandwiches across his face.
Neither was it surprising that Elizabeth should be passing down the village street on her way from a visit to Miss Banks, because she constantly went there; but Andy, removing a ham-sandwich from his eyes, and jumping up unhurt, did feel it to be a particular irony of fate that she should be passing at that moment.
It really seemed as if fate, not content with depriving him of her, was making faces at him afterwards. But as the pony continued to execute a pas seul to the wonder of all beholders and the imminent detriment of the shafts, he was obliged to run to the little animal’s head, and to hold it until the band was safely housed in the Public Hall opposite. By that time Elizabeth had entered the grocer’s shop, where she remained until the apples were restored to the cart, and Andy departed, leaving only Mrs. Jebb’s sandwiches on the road to show what had taken place.
He went on his way, feeling peculiarly miserable. Though he had dreaded the next meeting with Elizabeth, he had vaguely pictured it as something heroic—on his side, at any rate. Now nothing was left but the intense and bitter realisation that he was no more to her than any other man who passed her on the road.