Honor started, looked up, and saw Taverner Langford there, looking at her, and then at Oliver.
'Won't you step in and take a chair, sir?' asked Honor, rising and moving towards the door.
'No, I am well where I am,' answered Taverner, leaning his elbows on the bottom of the window and peering in. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, that shadowed the upper part of his face, but out of this shadow shone his eyes with phosphoric light.
'Father!' exclaimed Honor, 'here is Mr. Langford.'
Oliver had risen and stood with his pipe in one hand leaning against one jamb of the chimney, looking wonderingly at the visitor. Langford had ascended the steps from the lane, and thus had appeared suddenly before the Luxmores.
From the window no one that passed was visible unless he were seated on the top of a load of hay carted along the lane from the harvest-field.
Oliver Luxmore went to the window, and, like his daughter, asked, 'Will you step inside, sir?'
'No, thank you,' answered Langford, 'I can talk very comfortably standing where I am. I know you to be a sensible man, Luxmore, and to have your eyes about you, and your ears open. There is no man goes about the country so much as you. They say that in a town the barber knows all the news, and in the country the carrier. Now I'll tell you what I want, Luxmore, and perhaps you'll do me the favour to help me to what I want. I'm short of hands, and I want a trusty fellow who can act as cattle-driver for me. I won't have a boy. Boys over-drive and hurt the cattle. I must have a man. Do you know of one who will suit?'
Oliver shook his head. 'I don't know that I do, and I don't know that I don't.'
'You are talking riddles, Luxmore. What do you mean?'