I will confess that after a time his prattle wearied me; ’twas too much honey and cloyed my palate. If he had known as much of the sex as has fallen to my lot he would have taken another stand, and sung in a lower key.
Well, ’twas late in the afternoon when we reached the hills beyond Ewhurst, and began to climb the rugged way to the top. The wind had gone down with the sun in a flurry of gold in the west, to which that eastern breeze had beat all day; and over the head of Pitch Hill last year’s heather still blazed in its decay.
When we had got to the Windmill Inn, that lies packed into the side of the wooded hill, we descended for refreshment, and I saw the horses stalled below for baiting. Now that house, little and quiet, perches in a lonely way in the pass of the hill, and upon one side the ground falls so fast away that the eye carries over a precipitous descent toward the weald of Surrey and the dim hills by the sea. And this view was fading swiftly in the window under a bleak sky as Masters and I ate of our dinner in the upstairs room that looked upon it. He had a natural grace of mind despite the rawness of his behavior, and his sentiments emerged sometimes in a gush, as when, says he, looking at the darkening weald:
“I love it, Captain. ’Tis mine. My home is there, and, God willing, Anne’s too shall be.”
“Amen!” said I heartily, for the boy had gone to my heart, absurd though he was.
And just on that there was a noise without the door, the clank of heavy feet rang on the boards, and Timothy Grubbe’s ugly mask disfigured the room.
He came forward a little with a grin on his distorted features, and, looking from one to the other of us, said he:
“My respects, Captain, and to this young plover that no doubt ye’re plucking. By the Lord, Dick Ryder, but I had given you up. Heaven sends us good fortune when we’re least thinking of it.”
Masters, at his word, had started up. “Who are you, sir, that intrudes on two gentlemen?” he demanded with spirit. “I’ll have you know this is a private room. Get you gone!”
“Softly, man,” says Grubbe, in an insinuating voice. “Maybe I’m wrong and you’re two of a color. Is it an apprentice, Dick, this brave lad that talks so bold and has such fine feathers?”