“Very well, come along. But what do you want a cab for, when you’ve got your own horse, and a good ’un too?”
“Stick to your own business,” I answered gruffly; and that tone seemed to have more charm for him, as happens very often with ill-conditioned men; “you are on your legs now, try to keep them moving.”
“Gent wants to know fare to Shepperton;” he shouted through the precincts of the bar into the stable-yard. “Any of you chaps been there lately? Governor gone up to have a snooze.” He illustrated that point with a genial wink.
“Why, Tom been there, not so very long agone,” said a little old man who was washing a double curb under the pump, and twisting out the grime with his thumbnails; “or if it wasn’t Tom, it was Joe—Joe Clipson, so it was. And a long job it were. I had to stop up for him. Thought something must have happened—he were gone such a time.”
“Ah, but perhaps he went with a fishing party,” I said as indifferently as I could; “when people go fishing they won’t be hurried. Come in and have a glass of beer yourself, my friend.”
“Well, no. I never see’d no rods, nor baskets, nor nothing of that sort, so far as I remember. But he did say something about waiting for a boat. Thank’e, sir, thank’e; here’s your good health.”
“How long ago was it? And who went with him?” My hand began to shake a little, do what I would. For I seemed to be on the track at last, where no one was likely to be bribed into lying.
“Well, I don’t know justly, for I worn’t here when he went; and when he come back, he had been to station first, and I were that sleepy that I didn’t care to hearken, nor he to gab much, for that matter; but I know he said something about a young femmel. And how long agone? Why, let me see. Must ’a been about time for sowing scarlet-runners, for I mind my little grand-darter was playing with them, pointing out the speckles, and no two quite alike, a thing as I never took no heed on; and I must a’ been shelling of them for her mother.”
“What time do you generally sow scarlet-runners here? Not, I suppose, till all chance of frost is over.”