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"Good mornin', mum," said the visitor, diffidently. "Would you be doing with an egg or so?" Mr. Druitt had been introduced by Mrs. Goudie as the higgler, or itinerant poulterer and greengrocer, who served the house in Mr. Bates' time. He was a thin middle-aged man, with light watery eyes, a straggling beard, and an astoundingly dilatory manner.
He was, besides, the best sacrifice the higgler could make, as he had supplied him with no game since; and by this means the witness had an opportunity of screening his better customers: for the squire, being charmed with the power of punishing Black George, whom a single transgression was sufficient to ruin, made no further enquiry.
Mary, after an afternoon out, came home with her face all red and blubbered, sat in the kitchen sobbing and rocking herself, and told Mavis how she had heard on unimpeachable authority that the higgler was a married man. He had always been married and poor Mary confessed that she was very fond of him, although so angry with him for his disgraceful treatment of her.
"Well, have you made up your mind, old higgler?" said Asie, clapping him on the shoulder. The most dishonoring familiarity is the first tax these women levy on the frantic passions or griefs that are confided to them; they never rise to the level of their clients; they make them seem squat beside them on their mudheap. Asie, it will be seen, obeyed her master admirably.
He pitched, therefore, upon the city of Hereford, where he worked honestly for a space, until being in company one night with a higgler, he heard the man say he should go to a place called Ross to buy fowls. Dyer answered that he did not care if he went with him, and in their journey, taking the advantage of a proper place he stopped his companion and robbed him.
"I'll wish you good morning," said the higgler. Then, when they thought he had been long gone and Mavis was talking to Mary, he put in his head at the kitchen doorway. "Will this make any difference?" he asked shyly. "Should I call again or do you forbid me the house?" The three women, Mavis, Mary and Mrs. Goudie, all looked at one another, quite perplexed. "Er no," said Mavis, after a pause.
Once, on his journey to London, some showers fell, which "raised the washes upon the road near Ware to that height that passengers from London that were upon that road swam, and a poor higgler was drowned, which prevented me travelling for many hours; yet towards evening we adventured with some country people, who conducted us over the meadows, whereby we missed the deepest of the Wash at Cheshunt, though we rode to the saddle-skirts for a considerable way, but got safe to Waltham Cross, where we lodged."* On another occasion Thoresby was detained four days at Stamford by the state of the roads, and was only extricated from his position by a company of fourteen members of the House of Commons travelling towards London, who took him into their convoy, and set out on their way southward attended by competent guides.
Druitt the higgler failed to pay his usual visit, and there was conjecture in the Vine-Pits kitchen as to the reason of his absence. He had never before allowed a week to pass without a call. Mavis asked Mary if he had written to her explaining his absence; and Mary said no, and that she felt very anxious. But next week he turned up, gay, jovial, looking ten years younger.
But to live the life of the poor drudge her father to be at the command and call of every boor for twenty miles round! why, the labours of a higgler, who travels scores of miles to barter pins, ribbons, snuff and tobacco, against the housewife's private stock of eggs, mort-skins, and tallow, is more profitable, less laborious, and faith I think, equally respectable.
Then she began to look backwards and forwards. Far back to the time when her father kept a little shop in Bantry, before he was stone broke one bad year and took to carrying the remnant of his stock-in-trade about in a basket as a higgler, which eventually led other members of his family to wander, less reputably, for their livelihoods.
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