"Is she married or single?"
Tom Pepp could not answer the last question. Supposed, now he came to think of it, she must be single, as no husband was there. He did not know her name.
"What is she like?" asked Miss Blake.
"I've never see'd her," said Tom Pepp. "I've never see'd her come out, and never see'd nobody go in but the butcher's boy. He don't go in, neither: he rings at the gate and waits there till they come to him. A woman in a poke bonnet comes out and does the other errands."
"Well, it must be a very lively place for a young lady!" mentally observed Miss Blake with sarcasm. "She must want to hide herself from the world."
"Mother see'd her at church once with her veil up. She'd never see'd nothing like her so pretty at Foxwood."
Turning to pursue her walk, Tom Pepp, who worked for Farmer Truefit, and who was in fact playing truant for half an hour and thought it might be policy not to play it any longer, turned also, the farm lying in that direction. At that moment, Miss Blake, happening to cast her eyes across the road, saw the head and shoulders of a gentleman stretched out of one of the sash windows of Clematis Cottage, evidently regarding her attentively.
"Who is that gentleman, Tom Pepp?"
"Him! Well now, what did I hear his name was again!" returned the lad, considering. "Smith. That's it. It's Mr. Smith, 'um. He be a stranger to the place, and come here just afore Mrs. Andinnian died. It's said he was some friend of her'n."
"Rather a curious person, that Mrs. Andinnian, was she not!" remarked Miss Blake, invited to gossip by the intelligence of the boy.