“This man, Jagger; what sort of a fellow is he?” Inman went on. “Not one of your best customers, I reckon?”
“He never tastes,” the landlord replied, “unless its a ginger-ale or summat o’ that sort now and again. It isn’t oft he darkens this door, but his father, Maniwel’ll come and sit for an hour now and then, though he puts naught much i’ my pocket. All t’ same”—the landlord’s clan loyalty triumphing over the narrower emotion of self-interest—“they’re nayther of ’em a bad sort; nayther Maniwel nor Jagger.”
“Two o’ t’ best,” Ambrose added. “I mind well makin’ happen six verses for Maniwel to recite at a teetotal meetin’—dearie me! it mun be forty year back. Terrible bad word it is, an’ all, for verse. That wor afore Maniwel happened his accident.”
“Afore he happened his accident!” the landlord laughed. “Why, man alive! he was a lad when he said them verses, and it isn’t more’n ten year since he lost his arm.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” assented Ambrose; “it was sin’ I giv’ up making verses now I come to think of it. If I’d ha’ been i’ my prime I could ha’ made a set o’ grand verses out o’ Maniwel’s arm.”
“Who is this Maniwel?” inquired Inman with some impatience. “Jagger’s father, you say, and a kind of local oracle, I gather?”
“Oracle or no oracle,” replied the landlord, who was not going to commit himself on a term with whose meaning he was unfamiliar; “he’s most people’s good word, and if Baldwin Briggs isn’t among ’em it’s because Maniwel won’t knuckle under to him. And why should he, when they worked side by side at t’ same bench and saw-mill for thirty year and more, and him t’ best man o’ t’ two? There is them ’at says ’at if he hadn’t lost his arm Baldwin ’ud never ha’ getten t’ business; but that’s as may be. To make matters worse there’s a lass i’ t’ case, and where there’s lasses there’s mischief.”
Ambrose chuckled. “A trew word, Albert, and brings up a verse about lasses I——”
“Never mind your verses,” Inman broke in. “What about this particular lass, landlord; and how did she come to concern this Maniwel and Baldwin Briggs?”
“Well, you see,” the landlord explained, “t’ saw-mill belonged her father, Tom Clegg, and it was only a poorish sort of a business in Tom’s time. Tom had part brass and only this lass to leave it to, and besides being as queer as Dick’s hatband, he’d summat growing in his inside ’at took all t’ sperrit out of him, as it would out o’ most men.