“I don’t mean local friends—visitors from London.”
“Very few. I’ve known one or two, but they’ve all been forriners. Mr Miller seems to like them forriners some’ow. But I don’t,” declared the old fellow. “They’re too infernal polite and sleeky for me. I wouldn’t trust any of ’em for a pint o’ beer.”
“They were gentlemen, I suppose?”
“Oh, dear, yes—full of fine graces and fine manners. They wore shoes like women, and shirts pleated like women’s blouses—great swells, I can assure you.”
“You never heard of any of their names?”
“No, how was I to ’ear? Once two of ’em came in one hot day and jabbered, sayin’ ‘boch! boch!’ an’ grinnin’ all over their faces. It was quite a long time before I discovered that they wanted two half-pints o’ bitter. I suppose boch is what they calls it in French.”
“Yes,” I laughed. “You’re quite right.”
The strangers had evidently been French, I reflected. Had they been Italian they would have asked for birra.
Regarding Lucie, I learnt that on several occasions, while she had been at home, a young, black-moustached foreigner had been guest at the Manor, and that she frequently drove him out in the dogcart. My host did not know the visitor’s name. He described him, however, as tall and thin with a narrow hatchet face, black eyes and moustaches that turned up at the ends.
“They passed up and down the village once or twice on their way to the post-office, and I ’eard ’em talking in some gibberish,” added the old fellow, as he raised his tankard to his lips. Like all his race in the rural districts, he had no love for the foreigner, be he whatever he might. In his estimation every person from beyond the Channel was “a froggie.”