Williams blew his nose noisily, in a large red handkerchief; then said huskily, "The Lard be praised! your lardship, the Lard be praised!"
Then the Earl and Williams shook hands; and the curate and Williams shook hands. The two young men shut the gate softly, and went down the road.
The curate went to lunch with the Earl. They had champagne, and the Earl grew frivolous, as his manner is; he has not much dignity, and he and the curate are old friends, for they were at Eton and "the House" together.
"I say, old chap!" said the Earl confidentially, "you were jolly careful that the Almighty should make no mistake, this morning."
The curate leaned back in his chair, and with more than a reminiscence of their college tutor in his manner, remarked, "In matters of importance, it is well to be strictly accurate."
IV
AT BLUE HOUSE LOCK
The life of Dorcas Heaven, who keeps the Blue House Lock, is somewhat lonely and monotonous. Her post is more or less of a sinecure, for but few barges pass along that bit of the canal. Indeed, the canal itself, though winding through the prettiest bit of country in the neighbourhood, is only navigable during a wet season. After a drought it grows so shallow that cows are wont to stand derisively in the very middle of it, cooling their legs.
Elijah, husband of Dorcas, is a labourer on a farm some two miles off.
As the path alongside the canal leads to nowhere in particular, there is not much traffic; but when a barge does come, Dorcas "bustles her about sharpish," and there is a great to-do. She looks upon herself as more or less the hostess of the occupants of the barge. "They change the weather and pass the time of day," their destination and their business are exhaustively discussed, and when at length stillness settles down over the Blue House, when there is no sound but the cry of a peewit or the rustle of a water-rat in the rushes, Dorcas fetches a chair into the doorway and sinks upon it, exclaiming, "'Law! what a paladum it have been, to be sure!"