Mrs. Cloke thought deeply. “I'm sure I can't quite say, ma'am, but I've a belief likely that it was something you may have let drop to young Iggulden when you was at Rocketts. That may have been what give us an inkling. An' so it came out, one thing in the way o' talk leading to another, and those American people at Veering Holler was very obligin' with news, I'm told, ma'am.”
“Great Scott!” said George, under his breath. “And this is the simple peasant!”
“Yiss,” Mrs. Cloke went on. “An' Cloke was only wonderin' this afternoon—your pillow's slipped my dear, you mustn't lie that a-way—just for the sake o' sayin' something, whether you wouldn't think well now of getting the Lashmar farms back, sir. They don't rightly round off Sir Walter's estate. They come caterin' across us more. Cloke, 'e 'ud be glad to show you over any day.”
“But Sir Walter doesn't want to sell, does he?”
“We can find out from his bailiff, sir, but”—with cold contempt—“I think that trained nurse is just comin' up from her dinner, so 'm afraid we'll 'ave to ask you, sir... Now, Master George—Ai-ie! Wake a litty minute, lammie!”
A few months later the three of them were down at the brook in the Gale Anstey woods to consider the rebuilding of a footbridge carried away by spring floods. George Lashmar Chapin wanted all the bluebells on God's earth that day to eat, and Sophie adored him in a voice like to the cooing of a dove; so business was delayed.
“Here's the place,” said his father at last among the water forget-me-nots. “But where the deuce are the larch-poles, Cloke? I told you to have them down here ready.”
“We'll get 'em down if you say so,” Cloke answered, with a thrust of the underlip they both knew.
“But I did say so. What on earth have you brought that timber-tug here for? We aren't building a railway bridge. Why, in America, half-a-dozen two-by-four bits would be ample.”
“I don't know nothin' about that,” said Cloke.