Andy washed his hands, put on a clean collar, which is all a young person can do, be he never so much in love, and strolled carelessly through the garden to the back lane which led past the Petches’ cottage.
He pretended not to see Sam Petch as he went by the asparagus bed, and hummed abstractedly when he went out of the little corner gate. It was as if he said to himself, “Ah, here is a gate—I may as well go through it.”
And he walked a step or two up the lane, then viewed the garden hedge with an intent air, as if he were laying deep plans about it. He even pulled a leaf or two, critically, and so managed to reach the holly bush at the end where there was a stile deep in shadow.
Again he paused, appearing to say to the blank universe, “This is actually a stile. Stiles are made to sit upon. I will sit.”
Thus he waited for his girl to pass, by a sort of logical sequence, which impressed the sparrows very much, and quite allayed any undue curiosity on the part of the fieldmice.
But Sam Petch, being neither a sparrow nor a fieldmouse, peeped through the holly bush and wondered.
Then he saw Elizabeth coming along, and he did not wonder any longer, but he did wish Andy good luck, for he had a sort of generosity, had young Sam Petch, and a sort that is rarer than it seems—he could be glad that somebody else was enjoying a treat while he had to work.
But all the same he chuckled to himself at the thought that Andy was going without butter, and he had no scruples whatever about drinking all he could afford to pay for, as usual; for he considered that his master had interfered with the most sacred right of a Briton—the right to get drunk on beer—and that the punishment exquisitely fitted the crime.
Still, he was growing fond of Andy, and he gazed after him through the hole in the holly bush with a benevolent eye.
“Gosh, I could put him up to a thing or two! He doesn’t know how to begin. Squeeze ’er ’and, squeeze ’er ’and, you young ijiot!”