He looked at her thoughtfully whenever she approached: so very blue-eyed and round; such a plump, neat figure in a black gown! He looked at her through a strong cloud of smoke as he puffed at his pipe and drank a last glass of the cider. She had suggested something. He was thoughtfully asking himself, Why not?
Presently he took a pencil and a letter from his breeches pocket. He began to write on the back of the envelope, making many erasions, knitting his brows and pouting his lips like an anxious child.
The girl came softly to the table and took away the mustard for another customer. Jethro never looked up at her. She had done her part. She had suggested.
He paid the bill and emerged into High Street. He looked a trifle more bluff and lurching than before. His face was red—with cider, with the excitement of his daring plan.
For the first time in his life he was yielding to impulse. Already he half regretted yielding. He was afraid of himself; he was more afraid of Gainah.
Yet he bent his head and went down two steps into the editorial offices of the Liddleshorn Herald. The place was empty save for a sharp-featured youth who was lounging at the side of the counter. He sharply asked the visitor what he wanted. He was a new importation, an embryo journalist, with a London journal as his goal. He touched the town side of things only. He had a smoldering contempt for farmers, and knew nothing of the master of Folly Corner.
Jethro pushed his envelope across the counter with a sheepish gesture.
“How many insertions?” asked the youth laconically, yet throwing an amused, curious glance at the big figure which stood near the door—an unconscious, unappreciated color scheme—in white and russet, buff and brown.
“How many times in?” The gentleman-farmer’s big, embarrassed laugh seemed to shake the silent place. “Well—once.”
As he went slowly out of the town the tinkle of a piano came out clearly from the front room of a little buff villa. There were rows of these buff villas on the outskirts of the town. Some navvies were putting down new drain-pipes. The notes of the piano and the reedy voice of a girl came out slowly, each note isolated and mingled with the nervous tap of the pickax. Jethro stood still and listened. It was a song of Purcell’s: