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All well an' 'arty?" Three or four of the party gave gruff response. The others sat smoking silently. One end of the table was unoccupied, and to this Peke drew a couple of rush-bottomed chairs with sturdy oak backs, and bade Helmsley sit down beside him. "It be powerful warm to-night!" he said, taking off his cap, and showing a disordered head of rough dark hair, sprinkled with grey.
"Adams wants me to speak a piece on that great day. I told him I couldn't m' lip's cracked!" and Marty giggled. "But Sally Prentiss is going to recite 'A Psalm of Life, and Peke Ringgold is going to tell us all about 'Bozzar Bozzar is' as though we hadn't been made acquainted with him ever since Hector was a pup. And Hector's a big dog now!"
An' if ye put it short, like D. David, that's just Damn David an' nothin' plainer. Aint it?" Helmsley laughed. "Exactly!" he said "You're right! Damn David suits me down to the ground!" Peke looked at him dubiously, as one who is not quite sure of his man.
Ah! an' there aint a toad in a hole hoppin' out between Quantocks an' Cornwall as hasn't seen Matthew Peke gatherin' the blessin' an' health o' the fields at rise o' sun an' set o' moon, spring, summer, autumn, ay, an' even winter, all the year through!" Helmsley became interested. "And you are the man!" he said questioningly "You are Matthew Peke?" "I am! An' proud so ter be!
"Well, if y'ave 'ad it ivir so bad, yer 'xperience aint every one's," retorted Peke. "If one fly gits into the soup, that don't argify that the hull pot 's full of 'em. An' there's more good wimin than bad takin' 'em all round an' includin' 'op pickers, gypsies an' the like.
Joe's condition is suthin' like the snappin' turtle's when he cotched a-holt of Peleg Swift's red nose as he was stoopin' ter git a drink at the spring. He didn't durst ter let go while Peke was runnin' an' yellin' 'Murder! but he was mighty sorry ter git so fur from home. Haw! haw! haw!" "What is the matter with Joe Bodley now, Walky?" asked Nelson, who was present.
"No wonder they felt that the usual tenure is too short for all that a man might accomplish, did he live well and wisely enough to do justice to all the powers with which nature has endowed him. I am myself inclined to think that the 'Tree of Life' exists, perhaps its leaves are the 'leaves of the Daura, for which that excellent fellow Matt Peke is looking. Or it may be the 'Secta Croa'!"
Peke entered without ceremony, beckoning Helmsley to follow him, and made straight for the bar, where a tall woman with remarkably square shoulders stood severely upright, knitting. "'Evenin', Miss Tranter!" said Peke, pulling off his tattered cap. "Any room for poor lodgers?" Miss Tranter glanced at him, and then at his companion. "That depends on the lodgers," she answered curtly.
Like a voice from the grave, the reply Tom had given to Matt Peke at the "Trusty Man," when Matt asked him where he had come from, rang back upon his ears "From the caves of Cornwall! From picking up drift on the shore and tracking seals to their lair in the hollows of the rocks! All sport, Matt! I live like a gentleman born, keeping or killing at my pleasure!"
"Ay, that he will!" responded Peke, under his breath;, "aint 'e sleepin' sound?" "Sound as a babe!" Slowly and noiselessly they stepped backward, slowly and noiselessly they closed the door, and the faint echo of their stealthy footsteps creeping away along the outer passage to another part of the house, was hushed at last into silence.
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