Her rogue face twinkled again, and, turning her chin, she rubbed it on her plump shoulder, as might a heifer, while from behind her Grandfather Gaunt's face looked out with a faint, sardonic grin.
Derek, hurrying on to Willey's Copse, caught sight, along a far hedge, of the big dark laborer, Tulley, who had been his chief lieutenant in the fighting; but, whether the man heard his hail or no, he continued along the hedgeside without response and vanished over a stile. The field dipped sharply to a stream, and at the crossing Derek came suddenly on the little 'dot-here dot-there' cowherd, who, at Derek's greeting, gave him an abrupt “Good day!” and went on with his occupation of mending a hurdle. Again that miserable feeling beset the boy, and he hastened on. A sound of chopping guided him. Near the edge of the coppice Tom Gaunt was lopping at some bushes. At sight of Derek he stopped and stood waiting, his loquacious face expressionless, his little, hard eye cocked.
“Good morning, Tom. It's ages since I saw you.”
“Ah, 'tis a proper long time! You 'ad a knock.”
Derek winced; it was said as if he had been disabled in an affair in which Gaunt had neither part nor parcel. Then, with a great effort, the boy brought out his question:
“You've heard about poor Bob?”
“Yaas; 'tis the end of HIM.”
Some meaning behind those words, the unsmiling twist of that hard-bitten face, the absence of the 'sir' that even Tom Gaunt generally gave him, all seemed part of an attack. And, feeling as if his heart were being squeezed, Derek looked straight into his face.
“What's the matter, Tom?”
“Matter! I don' know as there's anything the matter, ezactly!”