Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/313

 "I've no wish to hear," cried Haigh. He looked as Jan had seen him look before running some fellow out of his hall. "Are you going of your own accord"

"Let him finish," said Jan, with a grim impersonal interest in the point. In any case it was all over with him now.

"Very kind o' nice young man—always was nice young man!" said Mulberry. "Stric'ly 'tween shelves it was in your market-place, one blooming fair, when all good boys should ha' been tucked up in bed an' 'sleep. Nasty night, too! But that's where I see 'im, havin' barney about watch, I recollec'. That's where we first got old partic'lars. Arcade Sambo—birds of feather—as we used say when I was at school. I seen better days, remember, an' that nice young man 'll see worse, an' serve him right for the way he's tret his ol' p'rtic'lar, that took such care of him at the fair! Put that in your little pipes an' smoke it at the school. Farewell, a long farewell! Gobleshyer . . . Gobleshyer . . ."

They heard his reiterated blessings for some time after he was out of sight. It was not only distance that rendered them less and less distinct. The champagne was his master—but it had been a good servant first.

"At any rate there was no truth in that, Rutter?" Haigh seemed almost to hope that there was none.

"It's perfectly true, sir, that about the fair."

"Yet you had the coolness to suggest that he was lying about the wine!"

"I don't suggest anything now."

Jan kicked an empty bottle out of the way. The man's second tone had cut him as deep as in old odious days in form.

"Is that your money he's left behind him?"