That fly had pulled up on the road, and not so far off. Jim could hear interchanges between the driver and his fare, evidently male and English. Did Jim know that voice?
"All right—pull up here! I'll get down and walk the rest of the way. How far is it?"
"For to step it afut? Twenty minutes, easy."
"Which does 'easy' mean?"
"Easy for time, mister. You'll have to be a bit brisk to do it in twenty minutes. Give you twenty-three, to do it without idlin'."
A foot on the road, a coach-door that wouldn't hasp, a discovery that the driver has only one and elevenpence change for half-a-sovereign, and then the half-sovereign is on its way back to Furnival, and the fare has started on his twenty-three minutes' walk, with some of the change in his pocket. But he is not going to do it without idling, it seems.
Jim heard him approach the well-gap, and come to a stand. Then he turned up the brick pathway. Now, who was this chap going to be?
"Well, Jim Coupland! Where's Lizarann? I've come to pay her a visit. And you too!"
Jim knew Challis again the moment he heard his voice close. "Aha!" he exclaimed joyfully. "You're the gentleman. Came with the Master nigh a month agone!" And the cordiality of Blind Samson's big right hand was all the greater that it was welcoming, not only a friend, but what was in a sense the dawn of Lizarann. For this gentleman, whose name had slipped Jim's memory, would never have asked for her on insufficient grounds. In a flash of his mind, Jim had inferred that his visitor, on his way to the Rectory, had decided—from information received—that his lassie, due there the day before, would be, or might be, already with her father at the Abbey Well. A very reasonable view! It was almost an assurance that his child had arrived, that this gentleman should speak of her thus.
Challis left his hand in Jim's, while he said, "But where's the kid?"