“What about Bob?” said Ursa Major.
“Why, on Tuesday, after his day’s work, he walked all the way to Kesterton and bought his mother some oranges.”
“Did he?” quoth Bruin.
“Yes, he did, and Dick’s as kind and good as he is. I do like those lads.”
“It appears to me you like ’em all,” said Piggy Morris, and there was a little querulousness in his tone, as though he felt himself to be a natural exception.
“You never said a truer word,” said Lucy, laughing, “and I’m afraid I shall keep coming to see you, till you turn me out.”
Here Morris gave a chuckle, odd in its character, a cross between a grunt and a hiccup. “Then that’ll be for ever an’ ever, as long as there’s a threshwood to the door, or a tile on the roof.”
“By the way, Mr. Morris, do you know that Squire Fuller has refused us a piece of land for a Methodist chapel? He says he won’t have such a thing in his village.”
“His village! The old fool, it isn’t all his. Midden Harbour belongs to old Crabtree. Squire Fuller’s a bad old”——