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'Certainly' thought Stanley 'that does sound a bit thick! And he asked: "Is the woman here, too?" "No, she's gone home for the present." He felt relief. "I suppose Malloring's point is," he said, "whether or not you're to do what you like with your own property. For instance, if you had let this cottage to some one you thought was harming the neighborhood, wouldn't you terminate his tenancy?"
This man, Tryst, was a good workman, and his farmer had objected to losing him, but Lady Malloring had, of course, not given way, and if he persisted he would get put out. All the cottages about there were Sir Gerald Malloring's, so that in both cases it would mean leaving the neighborhood. In regard to village morality, as Felix knew, the line must be drawn somewhere.
She went on: "It's Sir Gerald Malloring's estate. Lady Malloring won't " She heard a snap. Mr. Cuthcott's mouth had closed. "Oh!" he said, "say no more!" 'He CAN bite nicely! she thought. Mr. Cuthcott, who had begun lightly thumping the little table with his open hand, broke out suddenly: "That petty bullying in the country! I know it! My God! Those prudes, those prisms!
In the event of this demand being refused, we regretfully decline to take any hand in getting in the hay on Sir Gerald Malloring's estate." Then followed ninety-three signatures, or signs of the cross with names printed after them.
Tod was, indeed, about Malloring's own height of six feet one, with the same fairness and straight build of figure and feature. But Tod's head was round and massive, his hair crisp and uncut; Malloring's head long and narrow, his hair smooth and close-cropped. Tod's eyes, blue and deep-set, seemed fixed on the horizon, Malloring's, blue and deep-set, on the nearest thing they could light on.
And at the wicket gate Kirsteen, awaiting the arrival of Derek and Sheila summoned home by telegram stood in the evening glow, her blue-clad figure still as that of any worshipper at the muezzin-call. "A fire, causing the destruction of several ricks and an empty cowshed, occurred in the early morning of Thursday on the home farm of Sir Gerald Malloring's estate in Worcestershire.
He looked at her, realizing suddenly that the association of his brother's family with the outrage on Malloring's estate was probably even nearer than he had feared. "Look here, Kirsteen!" he said, uttering the unlikely name with resolution, for, after all, she was his sister-in-law: "Did this fellow set fire to Malloring's ricks?"
After a silence of several seconds, Sheila answered: "Not for us, thank you; for others, you can." Lady Malloring's eyebrows rose a little, as if there seemed to her something rather unjust in those words 'for others. "Yes?" she said. Sheila, whose hands were clenched, and whose face had been fiery red, grew suddenly almost white.
"I came," he said, "to talk about this business up at Malloring's." And, encouraged by having begun, he added: "Whose kids were those?" A level voice with a faint lisp answered him: "They belong to a man called Tryst; he was turned out of his cottage on Wednesday because his dead wife's sister was staying with him, so we've taken them in. Did you notice the look on the face of the eldest?"
From the moment he heard of it he hardly spoke, and a perpetual little frown creased a brow usually so serene. In the early morning of the day after Malloring went back to town, he crossed the road to a field where the farmer, aided by his family and one of Malloring's gardeners, was already carrying the hay; and, taking up a pitchfork, without a word to anybody, he joined in the work.
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