“Anything else, Gaffer?”
“Eez; I minds when your grandfeyther wur put in the stocks.”
“Ha, ha! and after all your ’sperience, Pistol-legs, what do ee think be the best theng of all?” said Hedges.
“Aw,” said the ancient, picking up his sticks, and delivering his philosophy of the summum bonum with intense gusto. “The vinest theng of all be a horn o’ ale and a lardy-cake!”
“S’pose I must be gettin’ on,” said Hedges presently, and stuffing some hay, which had worked out, into his boot again—for he used hay instead of stockings—he got up, and with Ruck walked down the road.
“A pair of skinvlints,” said the wunt-catcher, looking after them. “One night up to West Farm they was settling a dealing job between um. Zo thur wur a fire, for the snow wur on the ground. Ruck he says, ‘A fire be a terrable waste, you. Let’s put he out.’ Zo they doughted the fire, and both got their feet thegither in a zack.”
By a stile the two farmers thus careful of their fuel were gossiping before parting. “Tell ee what,” said Ruck, in a mysterious tone; “this here dark hoss as Val Browne be training for the autumn yent no go. He doan’t know, and it bean’t no good to tell un—these yer quality be so uppish. But thur be a screw loose somewhere; his trainer be a bad un. Doan’t ee put a crownd on un.”
“Aw, to be zure,” said Hedges. “That there Guss Basset will catch it zum ov these yer days. Squire’s kippur says a’ be allus in th’ wood a-poaching.”
Then they parted, and a curious sight it was. First one would go a few paces, and then stop and talk, and presently come back to the stile again. Then both would walk away, and turn when ten yards distant and gossip, till by degrees they met at the stile once more. Not till this process had been repeated at least five times did they finally separate.
Later in the afternoon Geoffrey strolled out from Thorpe Hall into the park, and sat down under the shade of a huge beech-tree, on the verge of the wood, whence he could just see the roof of Greene Ferne in the meadows far below. There he reclined and pondered—“Where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also.”