The crook came down with a bang.
‘Twelve pound. The laird of Whanland.’
‘He is yours,’ said Speid, taking the bewildered Jimmy by the elbow. ‘Your grandmother was very civil to me the first time I saw her, and I am glad to be able to oblige her.’
The boy looked at him in amazement.
Gilbert had slipped some money into his pocket before starting for the sale; he held the two gold pieces out to him.
‘You can take him home with you now,’ he said, smiling.
Jimmy Stirk left the ‘roup’ in an internal exultation which had no outward nor visible sign but an additional intensity of aspect, the halter which had hung over his arm adorning the head of the little brown horse, on whose back he jogged recklessly through the returning crowd. His interest in the sale had waned the moment he had become owner of his prize; but his grandmother, who had set out to enjoy herself and meant to do so thoroughly, had insisted on his staying to the end. She kept her seat at the foot of the wood-pile till the last lot had changed hands, using her tongue effectively on all who interfered with her, and treating her grandson with a severity which was her way of marking her sense of his good fortune.
Granny Stirk, or ‘the Queen of the Cadgers,’ as local familiarity had christened her, was one of those vigorous old people, who, having lived every hour of their own lives, are always attracted by the possibilities of youth, and whose sympathy goes with the swashbuckling half of the world. For the tamer portion of it, however respectable, they have little feeling, and are often rewarded by being looked upon askance during life and very much missed after death. They exist, for the most part, either in primitive communities or in very old-fashioned ones, and rarely in that portion of society which lies between the two. Gilbert, with his appearance of a man to whom anything in the way of adventure might happen, had roused her interest the moment she saw him holding Lady Eliza’s mare outside her own cottage door. His expression, his figure, his walk, the masculine impression his every movement conveyed, had evoked her keenest sympathy, and, besides being grateful for his kindness to Jimmy, she was pleased to the core of her heart by the high-handed liberality he had shown. It was profitable to herself and it had become him well, she considered.
The cadgers, or itinerant fish-sellers, who formed a distinct element in the population of that part of the coast, were a race not always leniently looked upon by quiet folk, though there was, in reality, little evil that could be laid to their charge but the noise they made. While they had a bad name, they were neither more nor less dishonest and drunken than other people, and had, at least, the merit of doing their business efficiently. It was they who carried the fish inland after the boats came in, and those who stood on their own feet and were not in the pay of the Kaims fishmongers, kept, like the Stirks, their own carts and horses. When the haul came to be spread and the nets emptied, the crowding cadgers would buy up their loads, either for themselves or for their employers, and start inland, keeping a smart but decent pace till they were clear of the town, and, once on the road, putting the light-heeled screws they affected to their utmost speed. Those whose goal was the town of Blackport, seven or eight miles from the coast, knowing that the freshest fish commanded the highest price, used the highroad as a racecourse, on which they might be met either singly or in a string of some half-dozen carts, pursuing their tempestuous course.
The light carts which they drove were, in construction, practically flat boxes upon two wheels, on the front of which sat the driver, his legs dangling between the shafts. As they had no springs and ran behind horses to which ten miles an hour was the business of life, the rattle they made, as they came bowling along, left no one an excuse for being driven over who had not been born deaf. Those in the employ of the Kaims fishmongers would generally run in company, contending each mile hotly with men, who, like Jimmy Stirk, traded for themselves, and took the road in their own interests.