"This comes of a gentleman mixing with them as is beneath him," he muttered, and he mopped his perspiring forehead with a bandanna handkerchief.
The miller snorted, the mason grunted, the little postman laughed in his thin pipe.
Drayton's eyes flashed.
"I'm a gentleman, I am, if you want to know," he said, defiantly.
The blacksmith stood by, leisurely rolling down his shirt-sleeves.
"Ey, for fault of wise folk we call you so," he said, and laughed. "But when I leet of a man, I's rather have him nor a hundred sec gentlemen as you!"
"Thoo's reet for once, John!" shouted Dick o' the Syke, and there was some general laughter.
"Gentleman! Ax the women-folk what they mak' of sec a gentleman," continued the blacksmith with contemptuous emphasis. "Him as larn't folks to fill the public and empty the cupboard."
There was a murmur among the men as they twisted about.
"Ax them what they mak' of him 'at spent four days in Lunnon and came back another man—ax the women-folk; they're maistly reet, I reckon."