"A pleasant change, I should think," a gruff man was beginning—an unattractive person this, with a week-old beard and a frowning brow, when an old fellow, who had been sitting disconsolately in the corner of the room, suddenly struck in:
"I d' 'low, Giles, ye'll be like to miss we when ye're all among strangers, I d' 'low ye will. 'E-es, ye'll be like to miss we just so much as us'll miss you."
Giles rolled his eyes towards him with a startled expression, but said nothing for a moment or two; then he remarked, in a somewhat dolorous tone:
"I d' 'low I'll miss you, Jim; you and me has sat side by side this fifteen year—'tis fifteen year, bain't it, since ye come?"
"Ah! fifteen year," agreed Jim. "I'll be the woldest inmate in th' Union when you do leave."
"'E-es, Jim, thee 'ull be gettin' all the buns and all the baccy now," cried one of the others, laughing. "He'll have to stand up and say 'Good marnin'' to the gentry when they comes round, and tell his age, and how long he've a-been here, and all. I d' 'low he'll do it just so well as you."
Giles gazed at the speaker frowningly; he did not seem to like the idea, but if he meditated a retort he was prevented from uttering it by the advent of a messenger from the matron, which was the signal for his own departure. He stood up, and went shuffling from one to the other of his former cronies, shaking hands with them all, but without speaking. He gripped Jim's hand the hardest, and pumped it up and down for so long a time that the messenger grew impatient; and then he went stumbling along the passage, and down the stone stairs to the door, where the master and matron both stood awaiting him. He received the money which had been placed in the master's hands for his actual needs, and scraped his rickety old foot, and pulled his forelock, after a forgotten fashion, as he listened to their kindly words. Then they, too, shook hands with him, and accompanied him to the gate, looking after the feeble old figure until it disappeared.
"I do hope Mrs. Tapper will look after him," said the matron. "He's no more fit to take care of himself than a baby."
Giles tottered on down the hill, his eyes roaming vaguely over the landscape, which was looking its fairest on this mellow June afternoon. Yonder rolled the downs, all golden green in the light of the sinking sun, nearer at hand lay the meadows, very sheets of buttercup gold; every leaf and twig of the hedgerow was a-glitter, too—all Nature, it seemed, had arrayed itself in splendour to correspond with the old pauper's sudden access of wealth. Not that any such fancy crossed his dazed mind. As he shuffled along he thought of how he had walked this way last year, with Jim at his side, on one of their rare outings. They had, in fact, been on their way to the parsonage, and Jim, who had been a farm labourer in a previous state of existence, had called his attention to the "for'ardness" of the potatoes which were growing where the hay grew now.
Giles paused mechanically, and gazed at the billowing grass; and then he went on a little, and stopped again at the next gap in the hedge, where Jim had pointed out the splendid view of Branston.