"I reckon," said the landlord, as soon as the swell had a little subsided, "they must be the two chaps that put up here, some time ago, for an hour or so. You should ha' seen 'em get on and off the saddle—that's all! Why, a' laughed outright! The chap with the hair under his chin got on upon the wrong side, and t'other seemed as if he thought his beast would a' bit him!"
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed all.
"I thought they'd a' both got a fall before they'd gone a dozen yards!"
"They've taken a strange fancy to my churchyard," said the sexton, setting down his glass, and then preparing to fill his pipe again; "they've been looking about among 'em—among t'ould gravestones, up behind t'ould yew-tree yonder; and one of them writ something, now and then, in a book; so they're book-writers, in coorse!"
"That's scholars, I reckon," quoth Dickons; "but rot the larning of such chaps as them!"
"I wonder if they'll put a picture o' the Hall in their book," quoth the sexton. "They axed a many questions about the people up there, especially about the squire's father, and some ould folk, whose names I knew when they spoke of 'em—but I hadn't heard o' them for this forty year. And one of 'em (he were the shortest, and such a chap, to be sure!—just like the monkey that were dressed i' man's clothes, last Grilston fair) talked uncommon fine about young Miss"——
"If I'd a' heard him tak' her name into his dirty mouth, his teeth should a' gone after it!" said Tonson.
"Lord! he didn't say any harm—only silly like—and t' other seemed now and then not to like his going on so. The little one said Miss were a lovely gal, or something like that—and hoped they'd become by-and-by better friends—ah, ha!"
"What! wi' that chap?" said Pumpkin—and he looked as if he were meditating putting the little sexton up the chimney, for the mere naming of such a thing.
"I reckon they're fro' London, and brought toon tricks wi' 'em—for I never heard o' such goings on as theirs down here afore," said Tonson.