'Groom? Groom be hanged! Wire to him.'
'It'll take me the best part of two hour to go and telegrapht. And it cosses money. And dinner at the auction cosses money.'
'Oh!' cried Reddin with intense irritation, 'take this, you fool!'
He flung his purse at Vessons.
'Well, well,' thought Vessons, 'I mun yumour 'im. He's fretched along of her marrying the minister. "Long live the minister!" says Andrew.'
Chapter 18
Next morning Vessons went off in high feather; Hazel was so safely disposed of. Reddin left at the same time, and all the long May day Undern was deserted, and lay still and silent as if pondering on its loneliness. Reddin did not return until after night-fall.
He spent the day in a curious manner for a man of his position, under a yew-tree, riven of trunk, gigantic, black, commanding Edward's house. He leant against the trunk that had seen so many generations, shadowed so many fox-earths, groaned in so many tempests.
Above his tent sailed those hill-wanderers, the white clouds of May. They were as fiercely pure, as apparently imperishable, as a great ideal. With lingering majesty they marched across the sky, first over the parsonage, then over Reddin, laying upon each in turn a hyacinth shadow.
Reddin watched the house indifferently, while Martha went to and fro cleaning the chapel after the wedding.