When both he and Langford had disappeared, Kate burst out laughing.
'O Honor!' she said, 'that screw, Mr. Langford! how his voice creaked. I thought all the time he was speaking of a screw driven into father, creak, creak, creak!'
'For shame, Kate! Mr. Taverner Langford has done us a great kindness. He must not be ridiculed.'
'I do not believe in his kindness,' answered the lively Kate. 'The grey has got the glanders, or is spavined, that is why he wants to lend her. Unless father is very keen, Mr. Langford will overreach him.' Then she threw aside the basket she had been weaving. 'There, Honor, that is done, and my fingers are sore. I will do no more. No—not even to buy the grey with my earnings. I am sure that grey is coming to bring us ill-luck. I turned my thumb in all the time that Mr. Langford was here, I thought he had the evil eye, and—Honor—his wicked eye was on you.'
CHAPTER VI.
THE PROGRESS OF STRIFE.
So it fell out that two worthy men, land-owners, brothers-in-law, in the parish of Bratton Clovelly, each a churchwarden, each a pillar of religion, Jakim and Booz, one of the Temple, the other of the Tabernacle, were at variance. About what? About nothing, a little red spider, so minute that many a man could not see it without his spectacles.
The money-spinner had provoked the calling of names, the flying forth of fury, the rush of blood to the head of Hillary Nanspian, and a fit. It was leading to a good deal more, it was about to involve others beside the principals.
But the money-spinner was really only the red speck at the meeting-point of rivalries, and brooding discontents and growing grievances. Nanspian had long chafed at the superiority assumed by Langford, had been angry at his own ill-success, and envious of the prosperity of his brother-in-law. And Langford had fretted over the thriftlessness of Nanspian, and the prospect of his own gains being dissipated by his nephew.
Hillary was a boastful and violent man. Taverner was suspicious and morose. But Nanspian was good-natured at bottom; his anger, if boisterous, soon blew away. Langford's temper was bitter; he was not malevolent, but he harboured his wrongs, and made a sort of duty of revenging them.