“She had ought to,” said Iggulden. “Whoa, Buller! She's a Lashmar. They never was double-thinking.”
“Oh, you found that? Has the answer come from your uncle?” said Skim, doubtful whether so remote a land as America had posts.
The others looked at him scornfully. Skim was always a day behind the fair. Iggulden rested from his labours. “She's a Lashmar right enough. I started up to write to my uncle—at once—the month after she said her folks came from Veering Holler.”
“Where there ain't any roads?” Skim interrupted, but none laughed.
“My uncle he married an American woman for his second, and she took it up like a—like the coroner. She's a Lashmar out of the old Lashmar place, 'fore they sold to Conants. She ain't no Toot Hill Lashmar, nor any o' the Crayford lot. Her folk come out of the ground here, neither chalk nor forest, but wildishers. They sailed over to America—I've got it all writ down by my uncle's woman—in eighteen hundred an' nothing. My uncle says they're all slow begetters like.”
“Would they be gentry yonder now?” Skim asked.
“Nah—there's no gentry in America, no matter how long you're there. It's against their law. There's only rich and poor allowed. They've been lawyers and such like over yonder for a hundred years but she's a Lashmar for all that.”
“Lord! What's a hundred years?” said Whybarne, who had seen seventy-eight of them.
“An' they write too, from yonder—my uncle's woman writes—that you can still tell 'em by headmark. Their hair's foxy-red still—an' they throw out when they walk. He's in-toed-treads like a gipsy; but you watch, an' you'll see 'er throw, out—like a colt.”
“Your trace wants taking up.” Pinky's large ears had caught the sound of voices, and as the two broke through the laurels the men were hard at work, their eyes on Sophie's feet.