The distant relation to the peer of the realm brightened. He stroked his microscopic moustache.
“I say!” he said, “sounds rather jolly, what?”
Mrs. Bott who had assumed an expression of refined disgust hastily exchanged it for one of democratic tolerance.
“Yars,” she said in her super-county-snaring accent, “doesn’t it? We always trai to taike an interest in the activities of the village.”
“I say, I think I’ll just go in and see,” he said.
He hoped that it would throw her off but as a ruse it was a failure.
“Oh yars!” she said, “Let’s! I think it’s so good for the village to feel the upper clarses take an interest in them.”
The hole in the hedge proved too small for Mrs. Bott’s corpulency, but the depressed connection of the peerage found a larger one further up which afforded quite a broad passage when the hedge was held back.
They entered the field.
William, his blacking and perspiration falling in drops on to his pale blue native costume, had just finished the wheelbarrow ride. His hair stood up round his face in matted clusters. He scowled at the newcomers.