'Didst see aught of a cobbler's bench perched by un?' demanded Zacchary, his wrath rising. 'Streak off now, tha girt gawk! And if thou should light on a few sheep up over—and us allows tha'll be some scared—there bean't no call to trot back to tell the Mistress. A body would ha' thought—but thy head's too full o' Lunnon impidence for aught else.'
Not waiting to hear the end of the speech, Tony wheeled round.
'Will it take long to mend it, Zacchary?' inquired Marion.
'Maybe, maybe. 'Tis a bad split. Easy, now there,' called Zacchary, watching Reuben freeing the wheelers. 'So. Let un graze quiet-like.'
Marion sighed. 'Do your best, Zacchary,' she said gently. 'We will walk on a bit, and wait at the inn till you come.'
After a short walk between the steep flower-grown hedges, the two reached the little hostelry which Tony had espied from the crest of the hill. A smiling, rosy-cheeked innkeeper, with a smiling, rosy-cheeked wife at his side, stood on the steps as the two came up, their approach having been noted from the kitchen windows. The woman smoothed her apron and dropped a series of curtseys as her husband greeted the travellers.
'Thank you,' said Marion. 'We should like to wait awhile, but 'twould be more pleasure to walk about in the garden yonder than to sit indoors. We have had over much sitting in the coach these days past. But,' she added, rather anxiously, 'did not our man come up to ask for an awl and some leather for mending the trace?'
'He has but now gone up over, Madam,' said the innkeeper. 'The cobbler's cottage is that you see yonder, next the blacksmith's.'
As he spoke, the man pointed out the few dwellings of a tiny hamlet across the fields.
'If you would see that the cobbler comes himself,' began Marion:—then she broke off, smiling. 'Tony is indeed worth three men,' she said to Simone. 'See yonder where he comes with the cobbler riding behind.'