Part 13 (2/2)

”Yes.”

”Where are you going?”

”To Cornwall.”

”That's a long way and a hard road,” commented Miss Tranter; ”You'll never get there!”

Helmsley gave a slight deprecatory gesture, but said nothing.

Miss Tranter eyed him more keenly.

”Are you hungry?”

He smiled.

”Not very!”

”That means you're half-starved without knowing it,” she said decisively. ”Go in yonder,” and she pointed with one of her knitting needles to the room beyond the bar whence the hum of male voices proceeded. ”I'll send you some hot soup with plenty of stewed meat and bread in it. An old man like you wants more than the road food. Take him in, Peke!”

”Didn't I tell ye!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Peke, triumphantly looking round at Helmsley. ”She's one that's got 'er 'art in the right place! I say, Miss Tranter, beggin' yer parding, my friend aint a sponger, ye know! 'E can pay ye a s.h.i.+llin' or two for yer trouble!”

Miss Tranter nodded her head carelessly.

”The food's threepence and the bed fourpence,” she said. ”Breakfast in the morning, threepence,--and twopence for the was.h.i.+ng towel. That makes a s.h.i.+lling all told. Ale and liquors extra.”

With that she turned her back on them, and Peke, pulling Helmsley by the arm, took him into the common room of the inn, where there were several men seated round a long oak table with ”gate-legs” which must have been turned by the handicraftsmen of the time of Henry the Seventh. Here Peke set down his basket of herbs in a corner, and addressed the company generally.

”'Evenin', mates! All well an' 'arty?”

Three or four of the party gave gruff response. The others sat smoking silently. One end of the table was unoccupied, and to this Peke drew a couple of rush-bottomed chairs with st.u.r.dy oak backs, and bade Helmsley sit down beside him.

”It be powerful warm to-night!” he said, taking off his cap, and showing a disordered head of rough dark hair, sprinkled with grey. ”Powerful warm it be trampin' the road, from sunrise to sunset, when the dust lies thick and 'eavy, an' all the country's dry for a drop o' rain.”

”Wal, _you_ aint got no cause to grumble at it,” said a fat-faced man in very dirty corduroys. ”It's _your_ chice, an' _your_ livin'! _You_ likes the road, an' _you_ makes your grub on it! 'Taint no use _you_ findin'

fault with the gettin' o' _your_ victuals!”

”Who's findin' fault, Mister Dubble?” asked Peke soothingly. ”I on'y said 'twas powerful warm.”

”An' no one but a sawny 'xpects it to be powerful cold in July,” growled Dubble--”though some there is an' some there be what cries fur snow in August, but I aint one on 'em.”

”No, 'e aint one on 'em,” commented a burly farmer, blowing away the foam from the brim of a tankard of ale which was set on the table in front of him. ”'E alluz takes just what cooms along easy loike, do Mizter Dubble!”

There followed a silence. It was instinctively felt that the discussion was hardly important enough to be continued. Moreover, every man in the room was conscious of a stranger's presence, and each one cast a furtive glance at Helmsley, who, imitating Peke's example, had taken off his hat, and now sat quietly under the flickering light of the oil lamp which was suspended from the middle of the ceiling. He himself was intensely interested in the turn his wanderings had taken. There was a certain excitement in his present position,--he was experiencing the ”new sensation” he had longed for,--and he realised it with the fullest sense of enjoyment. To be one of the richest men in the world, and yet to seem so miserably poor and helpless as to be regarded with suspicion by such a cla.s.s of fellows as those among whom he was now seated, was decidedly a novel way of acquiring an additional relish for the varying chances and changes of life.

”Brought yer father along wi' ye, Matt?” suddenly asked a wizened little man of about sixty, with a questioning grin on his hard weather-beaten features.

”I aint up to 'awkin' dead bodies out o' their graves yet, Bill Bush,”

answered Peke. ”Unless my old dad's corpsy's turned to yerbs, which is more'n likely, I aint got 'im. This 'ere's a friend o' mine,--Mister David--e's out o' work through the Lord's speshul dispensation an' rule o' natur--gettin' old!”

A laugh went round, but a more favourable impression towards Peke's companion was at once created by this introduction.

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