“Jump up, Dick.”
I shook hands with the honest fogger, and gave him half-a-crown, which he didn’t seem to know how to take; and then I got up by Joe’s side, and we walked out of the yard at a foot’s pace, on to the grass; he kept off the road to be more quiet. It was bright moonlight, and a streak of white mist lay along the Close. I could hear nothing but the soft crush of the wheels on the rich sward, and the breathing of the great cows as we passed them in the mist. But my heart was beating like a hammer, as I looked back over my shoulder at one window of the old house, until it was hidden behind the elm-trees; and when I jumped down to open the gate into the road, I tore open the great coat, or I think I should have been suffocated.
“It’s no laughing matter, mind you,” said Joe, looking round, after we had gone about half-a-mile along the road at a steady trot.
“No, indeed,” said I. I felt much more like crying, and I thought he was trying to comfort me, in his way.
“Come, you button up that coat again, Dick; I won’t have you getting into the train at one in the morning with a chill on you. I won’t turn my back,” he went on, “on any man in the county at sampling wheat, or buying a horse, or a lot of heifers, or a flock of sheep. Besides, if a chap does get the blind side of me, it’s maybe a ten-pound note lost, and there’s an end of it. But when you come to choosing a missus, why, it seems like jumping in the dark, for all as I can see. There’s nothing to sample ’em by, and you can’t look in their mouths or feel ’em over. I don’t take it as a man’s judgment of any account when he comes to that deal—and then, if he does get the wrong sort!”
“Thank you, Joe,” said I, “but I’m not a bit afraid about getting the wrong sort, if all goes well.”
“No, but I be,” said he; “why, one would think, Dick, that nobody had to get a missus but you.”
Well, that made me laugh out, I was so tickled to find he was thinking of himself all the time; and for the rest of the drive we were merry enough, for he went on talking about his own prospects so funnily that it was impossible to keep sad or sentimental.
We drew up at the silent station five or six minutes nearly before the train was due, and were received by the one solitary porter.
“What luggage, Sir?” said he to me, as I got down.