West had incautiously raised his voice, and authority was down on him in a moment—or rather on his companion. "Now then, B14, none o' that! Idlin' and mutterin'! I suppose you think this is a rest cure. You get on with your job, and put some beef into it, or I'll report you." And for the next ten minutes, till the "cease work" bell, while West dug potatoes diligently under the apple-trees, Billy Blood stood over B14 and counted every weed that dropped into his basket. Gardiner could have laughed in his face. For such petty pin-pricks as Warder Thomson's he cared—not a pin-prick. As Lettice had said, where he was not abnormally sensitive he was wholesomely callous.
He got no further chance of speaking to the amiable wife-beater, but that did not trouble him. Some cock-and-bull story the fellow had got hold of—he was crassly ignorant, and stupid as a hog. That evening, however, he had a visit from the chaplain. The elderly gentleman who had fallen a victim to Mr. Gardiner, and whom Mr. Gardiner's son commonly alluded to as "the old foozle," had resigned, and been succeeded by a new man of very different kidney. The Rev. and Hon. Noel Dalrymple-Roche was not more than thirty, very big, very massive, with ashen-fair hair, a regular profile, and a cold blue eye. He had been a Cambridge rowing Blue and sixth Wrangler; and to these mixed accomplishments he added a third—he possessed enough driving force to command an army corps. A misfit in his profession, thought Gardiner, summing him up with an amused eye the first time he read the service; and a double misfit as prison chaplain.
It was his first visit to Gardiner. He came in alone—the chaplain has that privilege. The prisoner was standing under the window, slanting his book to catch the feeble light.
"Reading?" asked Roche, stretching out his hand for the volume.
"Yes, sir. I'm very fond of a good book." Gardiner, ever imitative, had adapted his language to his surroundings. He could not, however, thus adapt his book, a small blue volume of the Colección Española Nelson. Roche raised his eyebrows.
"Can you read this?"
"Pretty well. One gets to pick up something of a good many languages, knocking about the world."
"You come from Chatham, don't you? A sailor, I suppose?"
"Ship's cook."