It was the "traveller" who generally originated these remarks. The cripple always made a point of assenting; he wished to be agreeable, for the traveller was open-handed as well as long-tongued, and a quid of tobacco often found its way into the cripple's pocket after a prolonged debate, in which he took so prominent and important a part.
On these occasions George Lummis seldom did more than laugh a short laugh, when he thought it incumbent on him to do so, or even lift a faint protest when his sense of justice smote him (for he had some sense of justice); and it was not so very many years ago that he was a schoolboy, and if he chose to exert his memory he could have told of many kindnesses he had received fro the late vicar and his family, and from that very doctor whom he allowed to be abused so roundly, who had pulled him through a bad attack of typhoid fever when he was a boy of sixteen. "And to very little purpose," the doctor would say to himself sometimes as he drove over the bridge and saw him loafing away the best years of his life with his good-for-nothing companions. "For his own sake I had almost better have let him die."
On this particular morning it was the vicar who passed first. He walked slowly and heavily, for he was carrying a weight. The perspiration stood in beads on his forehead, and his straw hat had got pushed back from his brow, so that the full blaze of the sun beat down on his forehead, from which the hair was beginning to recede—"slipping back" he would explain laughingly, "not falling off, forsooth!" His burden, which was in reality a big well-grown boy of fourteen, in the first stage of fever, was wrapped in a big, not overclean-looking blanket, and in his weakness he was unable to assist his bearer to carry him, and, indeed, with the best of intentions, was almost as dead a weight as if he had been in a faint.
As the vicar passed over the bridge he kept his eyes fixed straight in front of him. Neither by look nor by gesture did he ask the loungers there to help him, and no one offered to lend a hand. His strength, great as it was, was almost spent when he reached the hospital and gave over his patient to the doctor's charge, and he sat down with a sigh of relief on the wooden settle in the hall. It was cool and fresh in here, almost cold coming out of the dust and the sun. He wiped his brow with his handkerchief; the portress brought him a glass of water.
"Too hot yet, Mrs. Smith," he said. "I'll wait till I've cooled down; but I'm as thirsty as a fish!"
"And no wonder!" said the matron tartly, but not without a note of admiration in her tones; "I never heard such nonsense. Why couldn't the boy be brought in the ambulance like anybody else, I should like to know, without you having to carry him as if he was a baby! I haven't any patience with those Chapmans, that I haven't!"
"Well, nor have I—much," said the vicar reflectively. "That woman is the dirtiest of the whole row. It would be hard to beat her in the parish; but there is something about her—I don't know what it is. She never tells me lies or makes excuses; she never begs, and never complains of other people's good fortune, and is always good-tempered—bother her! She would be so much easier to influence if she had a spice of temper, wouldn't she—eh, Mrs. Smith?" with a twinkle in his big brown eyes; for Mrs. Smith had the defects of her qualities, and possessed the hasty temper that goes so often with a warm heart. "But I must be off. Let Tommy know that I'll call in and see him some time in the afternoon, and hope I shall find him in clover. No, I won't wait for the doctor; I know pretty well what he'll say. I'll be off," and the vicar tossed off his glass of water, put on his hat, this time well tilted over his eyes, and strode down the hill for the second time that morning.
His return road lay through the buttercup meadows and over the stream by a little foot-bridge into the village. He passed a long row of well-to-do, prosperous-looking cottages, with bright little gardens in front of them, and the running stream behind them. At the gate of one of these a young girl was standing shading her eyes from the sun. She made a pretty picture in her big shady hat and print blouse, short skirt, blue linen apron, her sleeves rolled up, showing a pair of nice plump arms; for Milly was washing to-day, and was not ashamed to be seen at it.
She had a paper in her hand, and was watching for the vicar. Overhead the lilacs and laburnums were fading in the drought, and the few flowers that had come to maturity were dying off before their time. So intent was the vicar on his own thoughts that he was striding past without seeing her.
"A letter, sir!" she cried out, holding it out to him over the palings.