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"I dare say you've seen enough of Mr. Goarly by this time." "That's as may be. I don't know whom I have the pleasure of speaking to." "My name is Runciman, Sir. I'm the landlord here." "I hope I see you well, Mr. Runciman. I have about come to an end of my business here." "I dare say you have, sir. I should say so.
"But if you were on your oath, Mr. Twentyman? "Was there more than seven-and-sixpence an acre lost?" "No, nor five shillings," said Runciman. "I think Goarly ought to take his lordship's offer if you mean that," said Twentyman. Then there was a pause, during which more drink was brought in, and pipes were re-lighted. Everybody wished that Mr.
But yet among them all they didn't quite see how they were to confute the Senator's logic. They could not answer it satisfactorily, even among themselves; but they felt that if Goarly could be detected in some offence, that would confute the Senator.
They all understood the old goose, and were aware, nearly to a bushel, of the amount of wheat which the man had sold off those two fields. Runciman knew that the interest on the mortgage had been paid, and could only have been paid out of the produce; and Larry Twentyman knew that if Goarly took his 7s. 6d. an acre he would be better off than if the wood had not been there.
Let us hope that this refusal was remembered by the young woman in the bar when she made out the Senator's bill. He stayed at Dillsborough for three or four days during which he saw Goarly once and Bearside on two or three occasions, and moreover handed to that busy attorney three bank notes for five pounds each.
The Senator suggested that if the country delayed much longer this imperative task of putting its house in order, the roof would have fallen in before the repairs were done. Then he found that this gentleman too, avoided his company, and declined to sit with him any more in the Gallery of the House of Commons. Added to all this was a private rankling, sore in regard to Goarly and Bearside.
And now this abandoned wretch was bringing an action against his Lordship and was leagued with such men as Scrobby and Bearside! It was a dreadful state of things! How was it likely that he should give a passage through the wood to anybody coming after Goarly? "You're on Mr. Twentyman's land now, as I dare say you know." "I don't know anything about it" "Well; that wood is Lord Rufford's wood."
The attorney had never been a sporting man himself, but he had always been, as it were, on that side. "Goarly is a great fool for his pains," said the doctor. "He has had a very fair offer made him, and, first or last, it'll cost him forty pounds." "He has got it into his head," said the landlord, "that he can sue Lord Rufford for his fences. Lord Rufford is not answerable for his fences."
That evening, even in the drawing-room, the conversation was chiefly about horses and hunting, and those terrible enemies Goarly and Scrobby. Lady Penwether and Miss Penge who didn't hunt were distantly civil to Lady Augustus of whom of course a woman so much in the world as Lady Penwether knew something.
But he could get nobody to see, or at any rate could get nobody to acknowledge, that the rascality of Goarly had had nothing to do with the question as he had taken it up. The man's right to his own land, his right to be protected from pheasants and foxes, from horses and hounds, was not lessened by the fact that he was a poor ignorant squalid dishonest wretch. Mr.
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