“Parsonally, I don’t, captain. But, now as I see where they live, I know who they be. I’ve heerd talk ’bout the biggest o’ them—a good deal.”
The biggest of them! As if she were a salmon! In the boatman’s eyes, bulk is evidently her chief recommendation!
Ryecroft smiles, further interrogating:—“What have you heard of her?”
“That she be a tidy young lady. Wonderful fond o’ field sport, such as hunting and that like. Fr’ all, I may say that up to this day, I never set eyes on her afore.”
The Hussar officer has been long enough in Herefordshire to have learnt the local signification of “tidy”—synonymous with “well-behaved.” That Miss Wynn is fond of field sports—flood pastimes included—he has gathered from herself while rowing her up the river.
One thing strikes him as strange—that the waterman should not be acquainted with every one dwelling on the river’s bank, at least for a dozen miles up and down. He seeks an explanation:—
“How is it, Jack, that you, living but a short league above, don’t know all about these people?”
He is unaware that Wingate, though born on the Wye’s banks, as he has told him, is comparatively a stranger to its middle waters—his birthplace being far up in the shire of Brecon. Still, that is not the solution of the enigma, which the young waterman gives in his own way,—
“Lord love ye, sir! That shows how little you understand this river. Why, captain; it crooks an’ crooks, and goes wobblin’ about in such a way, that folks as lives less’n a mile apart knows no more o’ one the other than if they wor ten. It comes o’ the bridges bein’ so few and far between. There’s the ferry boats, true; but people don’t take to ’em more’n they can help; ’specially women—seein’ there be some danger at all times, and a good deal o’t when the river’s a-flood. That’s frequent, summer well as winter.”
The explanation is reasonable; and, satisfied with it, Ryecroft remains for a time wrapt in a dreamy reverie, from which he is aroused as his eyes rest upon a house—a quaint antiquated structure, half timber, half stone, standing not on the river’s edge, but at some distance from it up a dingle. The sight is not new to him; he has before noticed the house—struck with its appearance, so different from the ordinary dwellings.