Mary laughed. "I literally picked him up from the very wettest part of the wood, where all the firs are, you know. He was sitting mournfully in a young pond, apparently quite incapable of getting up by himself, and very much afraid of Parker, who was barking furiously."
"Showed his sense; but what was that chap doing there, and who is he?"
"He was trespassing, of course; makes a point of it, he says, but he'd evidently lost his way, so I put him right. I thought if he and the pater met there'd be words. He isn't at all a meek young man, and talks like that Course of Reading Miss Glover loves so."
"If he talked so much, he must have told you something about himself."
"Not much; his name is E. A. Gallup, and he was going to pay a call in
Redmarley."
"What's he like? I only saw his back, and deucedly disreputable it was.
He looked as if he had been rolling drunk."
Mary laughed again. "I shouldn't think he ever got drunk," she said; "he's far too solemn. In appearance, he's rather like a very respectable young milkman, fresh-coloured, you know, and sort of blunt everywhere, but he speaks—if you can imagine a cross between a very superior curate and the pater—that's what he speaks like, except that there's just an echo of an accent—not bad, you know, but there."
Grantly took the pipe out of his mouth and pulled the lobe of his ear meditatively.
"Gallup," he repeated. "Gallup, I've heard something about that name quite lately. Surely, if you walked with him right from the Forty Firs and talked all the time, you must have found out something more?"
"He's going to make a speech at Marlehouse to-morrow night; he was spouting away like anything just before he fell down. That's what made Parker bark so."