The Post-Girl. Edward Charles Booth
real conviction growing in him out of contradiction, as is the way of all flesh. "'E 's lived a deal i' furrin parts, onny'ow," he said craftily, making a counter demonstration to relieve pressure on the main issue, and retiring under its cover from the assailed position.
"Which on 'em?" inquired the brewer, with disconcerting directness.
"T' most part on 'em, ah think," Steg replied, boldly.
"France, 'as 'e?" asked the brewer, testing this broad statement of fact by the application of specifics.
"Ay," said Steg, with a big bold affirmative like the head of a tadpole, thinning out all suddenly into a faint wriggling tail of protective caution—"ah think so."
"Jarmany?" asked the brewer.
"Ay," said Steg again, "... ah think so."
"Roo-shah?" the brewer went on judicially, suddenly of a mind to turn this interrogation into a geographical display, but with a keen eye for the limits of his territory.
"Ay," repeated Steg, gathering such momentum of assent that he had buried his reply in the brewer's second syllable before he could stop himself, with his tail sticking out by the interrogation mark—"ah think so."
"Hitaly?" queried the brewer, pausing through a futile endeavor to pronounce whether America was a foreign part or not. "Choina? Hindia?"
"Nay," Steg demurred, with wily scruple, "ah 'm none so sure about t' last."
"'E 's traviled a deal, 'owseumdivver," said the brewer. "What 's brought 'im to Clift Yend, ah wonder ... of all places i' world. 'E 's not for company, it seems, bi t' looks o' things. Did y' 'ear owt why 'e 's come?"
"Naw," said Steg. "They say 'e writes a deal of 'is time."
"'Appen 'e writes for t' paper," the brewer suggested.
"Nay, ah div n't think that 's it," Steg said, taking the brewer's conclusion into his own hands like an ill-sharpened pencil and repointing it. "'E 's nowt to do wi' papers, by what ah can mek oot. 'E 's ta'en rooms for a month at start, wi' chance o' stoppin' on if 'e likes 'em, an' 'e 's brought a hextry deal o' things wi' 'im. 'E 's brought a bath...."
"A bath!" said the brewer blankly, interrogation and interjection in visible conflict over the word. Complete house furnishing in Ullbrig stops at the wash-tub. Beyond this all is vanity. "What diz 'e want wi' a bath?"
"Nay..." Steg said, declining any conflict on the unaccountabilities of strange men from far places. "Ah 'm nobbut tellin' ye same as they 've telt me," he added half-apologetically, in fear lest he might be accused of sympathies with false worship. "It 's a rare great bath an' all, by what they say—like one o' them big drums wi' a cover tiv it. Ye 've nobbut to gie it a ding wi' yer 'and an' it sets up a growl same as thunder. Onny road, that 's what Jeff Dixon says, an' 'e ought to know. 'E wor dingin' it all last neet."
"Some folks 'as fancies," said the brewer, with impersonal scorn.
"Ay ... an' ah was nigh forgettin'..." Steg struck in. "'E 's gotten a 'armonium comin' an' all. It 'll ought to be 'ere before so very long, noo."
"A 'armonium!" exclaimed the brewer, trying the word incredulously upon his understanding. "Nay," he said, after testing it with his own lips, "nay, ah think ye 're wrong this time, Steg."
"A pianner, then," Steg hazarded, after staring fixedly for a space with a wrestle going on laboriously behind his eyes. "It's all same thing i' yend."
"Nay, nor a pianner naythur," ruled the brewer, refusing the substitute with equal disregard. "Folks dizz n't tek 'armoniums nor pianners about wi' 'em fro' place to place i' that road. It 'll be a concerteeny ye 're thinkin' on, 'appen."
"Nay, it weean't," Steg said slowly.
"What'll it be, then?"
"It 'll be a pianner," he said, carrying the contention relentlessly in his mouth as a dog does a bone, and, seeing that, the brewer did not risk wresting it from him by force.
"'Oo says it will?" he inquired, temporising warily after this convincing display of faith.
"I do," said Steg, toll-gathering masterfully for himself.
"Ay, bud 'oo telt you?" demanded the brewer.
"Gyles' lad," said Steg.
"An' 'oo telt 'im?" the brewer continued, pursuing the inflexible interrogative path to fundamentals.
"Arny."
"Arny Dixon?"
"Ay, 'e did."
"Arny Dixon 'issen?"
"Ay, Arny Dixon 'issen. There 's not two of 'em."
"Arny Dixon telt Gyles' lad and Gyles' lad telt you, ye say?"
"Ay, ah do," said Steg, with a voice that cried for no abatement of its responsibility.
The brewer gave one thigh a moment's respite off the hard cask, and after that the other.
"Well!" he said, sententiously. "There 'll be time enough an' all, Steg. Them 'at lives longest sees most, they say."
"Ay!" Steg assented, with equanimity.
A shadow fell across the brewer's yard; an irresolute, halting shadow—the shadow of one with half a mission and two minds.
"'Neet, James," greeted the brewer to the yard-end, and the shadow deepened, falling finally over an adjacent beer barrel with a couple of nods and an expectoration.
"We 've gotten company up at Gift Yend, then," it said.
CHAPTER II
Where the roadway splits on the trim, green prow of Hesketh's high garden-hedge, dipping down like the trough of a wave and sliding along the cool, moss-grown wall beneath a tangle of leafy rigging towards the sunlit opens of Cliff Wrangham, Father Mostyn, deep in his own thoughts, came suddenly upon the Spawer, going homeward.
He was a tall, lithe figure of young manhood, in snowy holland, with the idle bearing of one whose activity is all in the upper story; eyes brown, steadfast, and kindly, less for the faculty of seeing things than of thinking them; brows lying at ease apart, but with the tiny, tell-tale couple-crease between them for linked tussle—brows that might hitch on to thought with the tenacity of a steel hawser; a jaw fine, firm, and resolute, closing strongly over determination, though void of the vicious set of obstinacy, with a little indulgent, smiling, V-shaped cleft in the chin for a mendicant to take advantage of; lips seemingly consecrate to the sober things of this life, yet showing too a sunny corner for its mirthmakings and laughters beneath the slight slant of moustache—scarcely more tawny than its owner's sun-tanned cheeks where it touched them. Father Mostyn awoke suddenly from his musing to the awareness of a strange presence, encompassing it with the meshes of an inquiring eye. Before the Spawer could extricate his glance from the toils of its inadvertent trespass, the dread "Ha!" had completed his enslavement and brought him up on his heel sideways at the moment of passing.
"... A stranger within our gates!" Father Mostyn observed, with courteous surprise, rocking ruminatively to and fro on his legs in the roadway, and dangling the ebony staff in both palms. He drew a comprehensive circle with its ferrule in the blue sky. "You bring glorious weather," he said, contemplating the demarcated area through rapt, narrowed lashes, and sensing its beneficence with the uplifted nostrils of zest.
The Spawer unlocked his lips to a frank, boyish smile that lighted up his face in quick response like the throwing open of shutters to the sunlight. Also, just a little emanative twinkle that seemed to suggest previous acquaintance with the Vicar over some Cliff Wrangham rail.
"To be truthful," he laughed, "it 's the weather that brings me. One feels it almost a sin, somehow, to let such a sun and sky go unenjoyed. The rain always comes soon enough."
"Not till we 've prayed for it," Father Mostyn decided with prompt reassurance, making critical diagnosis of the sky above. "... Prayed for it properly," he hastened to explain. "Indiscriminate Ullbrig exhortation won't do any good—with a sky like