“Ah—that you, Sam?” said Andy, turning very red and drawing in his hand. “We—er—we had better be moving on. I was just—er—exercising my arm.”
“Exercise splendid thing, sir,” said Sam, tactfully looking away. And while they walked down the road Andy said to himself that a man accustomed for two years to dealing with sharp Cockneys would find the simple villager a very easy problem. All he had to do was to wait until they reached the cottage at the next turning and then say, firmly but kindly, that he did not need Mr. Petch’s services.
The turning was two hundred yards away—one hundred and fifty——
“Here’s my poor wife at the gate,” said Sam. “Looked after the old Vicar like a mother, she did, until her legs went. It’s one of her bad days, but she was bent on saying a word of welcome to you as you went past.”
And of course Andy had to put it off a little longer while he took Mrs. Petch’s hand and bade her “Good morning.”
She placed her other hand on her heart, and began to speak quickly in a thin, high voice with a gasp in it.
“I’m done up, sir—waiting here so long for you—will you step in?”
So, of course, Andy went through the little garden in the wake of Mrs. Petch’s dragging footsteps.
“It’s such a comfort,” said Mrs. Petch, sitting limply, “to feel we’re settled again. Unsettledness is what tries the female nerves worse than anything, as you’ll no doubt find out some day, sir.”
Andy passed his hand across his brow. It was very difficult. But it was now or never. He rushed blindly at the fence with an incoherent—