“Well, I care not. Get up if you are coming with me. I’ll show you a better sight than daffodils, and something worthier of conversation.”
Pasco took up the schoolmaster, not solely for his own entertainment, but because he was somewhat uneasy at having let him into the secrets of his affairs. In his perplexity and inability to balance his accounts, he had grasped at the chance offered by the advent of Bramber; but now he feared he had been too confiding, and that the young man might blab what he had seen. It was requisite, or advisable, that he should disabuse his mind of any unfavourable impression that might have been received from the perusal of his accounts; and, like a stupid, conceited man, he thought that he could best effect this by ostentation and boastfulness.
In his pride, Pepperill would not admit that his circumstances were involved, though an uneasy feeling lay as a sediment at the bottom of his heart, assuring him that there was trouble in store.
“Why do horses have hair in their ears?” said Bramber on taking his seat, turning to the girl in the back of the carriage. “I will tell you why. If a cockchafer or an earwig were to get into your little pink shell, in a minute up would go the finger in protection of the organ, and to relieve you of the intruder. A horse cannot put up his hoof to clear his ear, therefore he is provided with a natural strainer, which will guard him from being irritated, and perhaps injured, by anything penetrating where it should not.”
“Thank you,” said Kate. “There is a reason for everything.”
“You don’t happen to know anything about business?” asked Pepperill, impatient to engross the conversation. “I mean--commercial business.”
“My mother kept a shop--in quite a small way.”
“Ah! in quite a small way. I don’t mean anything in a small way,” said Pasco, swelling. “I refer to buying in gross and retailing coal, wool, hides, bark, timber. That’s my line. I do nothing myself in a small way--still, I can understand there are people who do.”
Pasco nodded to right and left as he drove along, in return to salutations he received from men driving cattle, from farmers ambling on their cobs.
“You observe,” said Pepperill, “I’m pretty well known and respected.”