“Crossed?” queried the man. “Ah, well, doan’t ’ee go for to get down on your luck for one maid. There’s as güd blackberries hangin’ on t’bushes as ever was plucked from them. And yü’m tü young a chap tü be thinkin’ o’ yürself as a sallybat, and so I tells ’ee.”
Antony smothered a spasm of laughter.
“It’s not women folk I’m wanting in my life,” responded he, still with hypocritical gloom.
“Tis kittle cattle they be, and that’s sartain, sure,” replied the other, shaking his head. “But ’twas a rib out o’ the side o’ Adam the first woman was, so t’Scripture do tell we, and I reckon us men folk do feel the lack o’ that rib nowadays, till us gets us a wife.”
Antony was spared an answer, a fact for which he sent up devout thanks. They had made another leftward turn by now, and come upon a cottage set a little way back from the road,—a cottage with a wicket gate between two hedges, and a flagged path leading up to a small porch, thatched, as was the cottage.
“Here us be,” said the man.
Antony’s heart gave a sudden big throb of pleasure. The little place was so extraordinarily English, so primitive and quaint. True, the garden was a bit dilapidated looking, the apple trees in the tiny orchard to the left of the cottage quite amazingly old and lichen grown; but it spelled England for him, and that more emphatically than any other thing had done since his arrival in the Old Country.
Antony dismounted from the trap, then lifted Josephus and his bag to the ground. This done, he began to feel in his pocket for some coins. The man saw the movement.
“That bain’t for yü,” he replied shortly, “t’ Doctor will settle wi’ I.”
And Antony withdrew his hand quickly, feeling he had been on the verge of a lapse.