Page:Jepson--The Loudwater mystery.djvu/253

Rh of William Roper's sense of his great importance in the district to ooze out of him.

Mr. Flexen emptied him of the rest of it. He greeted him curtly, heard his story with a deepening frown, and abused him at some length for a babbling idiot, and sent him about his business. William Roper returned to his mother's cottage to find that her only object in life was to get him out of her cottage then and there. She had conceived the idea that the whole affair was a plot to have a good excuse for giving her notice to leave that cottage. She knew well that it was the opinion of all its other inhabitants that the village would be much better without her and that there were very good grounds for it.

William Roper perceived with uncommon clearness the truth of Mr. Flexen's assertion that he was a babbling idiot. His dream of outing William Hutchings from the post of head-gamekeeper and filling it himself was for ever shattered, and he had been the great man of the village for little more than fourteen hours, ten of which he had spent in sleep. He cursed the hour in which he had espied that luckless kiss, and too late perceived the folly of a humble gamekeeper's meddling with the affairs of those who own the game he keeps.

The next morning Elizabeth observed that her mistress was another creature, almost her old self indeed. The air of strain and oppression had, for the