The next morning after this, Gerald Piercey found himself in the front of the Seven Thorns. He had not known what it was: whether a hamlet, or a farm, or what he actually found it to be, a roadside inn. The aspect of the place was more attractive than usual. It was lying full in the morning sunshine; a great country waggon, with its white covering, and fine, heavily-built, but well-groomed horses, standing before the door, concentrating the light in its great hood. One of the horses was white, which made it a still more shining object in the midst of the red-brown road. The old thorns were full in the sunshine, which softened their shabby antiquity, and made the gnarled roots and twisted branches picturesque. The long, low fabric of the house was bathed in the same light, which pervaded the whole atmosphere with a purifying and embellishing touch. The west side, looking over the walled garden, which extended for some distance along the road, though in the shade, showed a row of open windows, at which white curtains fluttered, giving an air of inhabitation to that usually-closed-up portion of the place. The visitor felt, as he looked at it, that it was not a mere village public-house, that its decadence might have a story, and that it was possible that the daughter of such a house might not, after all, be a mere rustic coquette, or, perhaps, so bad a match for the half-witted Gervase. Colonel Piercey had never once thought of himself as the possible heir of Greyshott; he did not feel that he had any interest in keeping Gervase from marrying, and though it was intolerable that the heir of the Pierceys should marry a barmaid, his feelings softened as he looked at the old country inn, with its look of long-establishment. Probably there was a farm connected with it; perhaps there was a certain pride of family here, too, and the daughter of the house was kept apart from the drinking and the wayside guests. Meg Piercey might have divined that the young woman was really the best match that Gervase could hope for, and this might be the cause of her opposition. (He forgot that he had supposed it likely that Meg might be bringing the match about for her own private ends, one hypothesis being just as likely as another.) With this idea he approached slowly, and took his seat upon the bench that stood under the window of the parlour. The roads between Greyshott and the Seven Thorns were dry and dusty, and his boots were white enough to warrant the idea that he was a pedestrian reposing himself, naturally, at the place of refreshment on the roadside.

The landlord came to the door with the waggoner, when Colonel Piercey had established himself there, and his aspect could not be said to be quite equal to that of his house. Hewitt had a red nose and a watery eye. His appearance did not inspire respect. He was holding the waggoner by the breast of his smock, and holding forth, duly emphasising his discourse by the gesture of the other hand, in which he held a pipe.

“You just ’old by me,” he was saying, “look’ee, Jack; and I’ll ’old by you, I will. The ’ay’s a good crop; nobody can’t say nothing again that. But there’s rain a-coming, and Providence, ’e knows what’ll come of it all in the end. It ain’t what’s grow’d in the fields as is to be trusted to, but what’s safe in the stacks; and there’s a deal o’ difference between one and the other. Look’ee here! you ’old by me, and I’ll ’old by you. And I can’t speak no fairer. I’ve calcilated all round, I ’ave—me and Patty, my girl, as is that good at figures; and if it’s got in safe, all as I’ve got to say is, that this ’ere will be a dashed uncommon yeer.”

“It’s mostly the way,” said the waggoner, “I’ll allow, with them dry Junes. The weather can’t ’old up not for ever.”

“Nor won’t,” said old Hewitt, with assurance; “it stands to reason. Ain’t this a variable climate or ain’t it not? And a drop o’ rain we ’aven’t seen not for three weeks and more. Then we’ll ’ave a wet July. You see yourself when I knocked the glass ’ow it went down. And that,” he added, triumphantly, waving his pipe in the air, “is what settles the price of the ’ay.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if you was right, master,” said the waggoner, getting under weigh.

Gerald Piercey sat and watched the big horses straining their great flanks to the work, setting the heavy waggon in motion, with pleasure in the sight which diverted him for a moment from his chief object of interest. Coming straight from India and the fine and slender-limbed creatures which are the patricians of their kind, the great, patient, phlegmatic English cart-horse filled him with admiration. The big feathered hoofs, the immense strain of those gigantic hind-quarters, the steady calm of the rustic, reflected with a greater and more dignified impassiveness in the face of his beast, was very attractive and interesting to him.

“Fine horses, these,” he said, half to Hewitt at the door, half to the waggoner, who grinned with a slow shamefacedness, as if it were himself who was being praised.

“Ay, sir,” said Hewitt, “and well took care of, as ever beasts was. Jack Mason there—though I say it as shouldn’t—is awfull good to his team.”

“And why shouldn’t you say it?” said Colonel Piercey. “It’s clear enough.”

“He’s a relation, that young man is, and it’s a country saying, sir, as you shouldn’t speak up for your own. But I ain’t one as pays much ’eed to that, for, says I, you knows them that belong to you better nor any one else does. There’s my girl Patty, now; there ain’t one like her betwixt Guildford and Portsmouth, and who knows it as well as me?”

“That’s a very satisfactory state of things,” said the visitor, “and, of course, you must know best. But I fear you won’t be able to keep Miss Patty long to yourself if she’s like that.”

At this Patty’s father began to laugh a slow, inward laugh. “There’s ’eaps o’ fellows after ’er, like bees after a ’oney ’ive. But, Lord bless you! she don’t think nothing o’ them. She’s not one as would take up with a country ’Odge. She’s blood in her veins, has my girl. We’ve been at the Seven Thorns, off and on, for I don’t know ’ow many ’undred years: more time,” said Hewitt, waving his pipe vaguely towards Greyshott, “than them folks ’as been at the ’All.”

“Ah, indeed! That’s the Pierceys, I suppose?”

“And a proud set they be. But ’Ewitts was ’ere before ’em, only they won’t acknowledge it. I’ve ’eard my sister Patience, ’as ’ad a terrible tongue of ’er own, tell Sir Giles so to his face. ’E was young then, and father couldn’t keep ’im out o’ this ’ouse. After Patience, to be sure; but he was a terrible cautious one, was Sir Giles, and it never come to nought.” The landlord laughed with a sharp hee-hee-hee. “I reckon,” he said, “it runs in the blood.”

“What runs in the blood?”

“I don’t know, sir,” said the innkeeper, pausing suddenly, “if you’ve called for anything? I can’t trust neither to maid nor man to attend to the customers now Patty’s away.”

“If you have cider, I should like a bottle, and perhaps you’ll help me to drink it,” said Colonel Piercey. “I’m sorry to hear that Miss Patty’s away.”

“In London,” said Hewitt; “but only for a bit. She ’as a ’ead, that chit ’as! Them rooms along there, end o’ the ’ouse, ’asn’t been lived in not for years and years. She says to me, she does, ‘Father, let’s clear ’em out, and maybe we’ll find a lodger.’ I was agin it at first. ‘What’ll you do with a lodger? There ain’t but very little to be made o’ that,’ I says. ‘They don’t come down to the parlour to drink, that sort doesn’t, and they’re more trouble nor they’re worth.’ ‘You leave it to me, father,’ she says. And, if you’ll believe it, she’s found folks for them rooms already! New-married folks, she says, as will spend their money free. And coming in a week, for the rest of the summer or more. That’s Patty’s way!” cried the landlord, smiting his thigh. “Strike while it’s ’ot, that’s ’er way! Your good ’ealth, sir, and many of ’em. It ain’t my brewing, that cider. I gets it from Devonshire, and I think, begging your pardon, sir, as it’s ’eady stuff.”

“But how,” said Colonel Piercey, “will you manage with your visitors, when your daughter is away?”

“Oh, bless you, sir, she’s a-coming with ’em, she says in her letter, if not before. Patty knows well I ain’t the one for lodgers. I sits in my own parlour, and I don’t mind a drop to drink friendly-like with e’er a man as is thirsty, or to see a set of ’orses put up in my stables, or that; but Richard ’Ewitt of the Seven Thorns ain’t one to beck and bow afore folks as thinks themselves gentry, and maybe ain’t not ’alf as good as ’er and me. No, sir; I wasn’t made, nor was my father afore me made, for the likes of that.”

“It is very good of you, I’m sure, Mr. Hewitt, to sit for half an hour with me, who may be nobody, as you say.”

“Don’t mention it, sir,” said Hewitt, with a wave of the pipe which he still carried like a banner in his hand: “I ’ope I knows a gentleman when I sees one; and as I said, I sits at my own door and I takes a friendly drop with any man as is thirsty. That ain’t the same as bowing and scraping, and taking folks’s orders, as is nothing to me.”

“And Miss Patty, you say, is in London? London’s a big word: is she east or west, or——”

“It’s funny,” said Hewitt, “the interest that’s took in my Patty since she’s been away. There’s been Sally Ferrett, the nurse up at Greyshott, asking and asking, where is she, and when did she go, and when she’s coming back? I caught her getting it all out of ’Lizabeth the girl. What day did she go, and what train, and so forth? ’Lizabeth’s a gaby. She just says ‘Yes, Miss,’ and ‘No, Miss,’ to a wench like that, as is only a servant like herself. I give it ’em well, and I give Miss her answer. ‘What’s their concern up at Greyshott with where my Patty is?”

“That’s true,” said Colonel Piercey, “and what is my concern? You are quite right, Mr. Hewitt.”

“Oh, yours, sir? that’s different: you ask out o’ pure idleness, you do, to make conversation; I understand that. But between you and me I couldn’t answer ’em, not if I wanted to. For my Patty is one as can take very good care of ’erself, and she don’t give me no address. She’ll be back with them young folks, or maybe, afore ’em, next week, and that’s all as I want to know. I wants her then, for I’ll not have nothing to do with ’em, and ’Lizabeth, she’s a gaby, and not to be trusted. Lodgers in my opinion is more trouble than they’re any good. So Patty will manage them herself, or they don’t come here.”

“The family at Greyshott takes an interest in your daughter, I presume, from what you say,” said Colonel Piercey.

Upon this Hewitt laughed low and long, and winked over and over again with his watery eye. “There’s one of ’em as does,” he said. “Oh, there’s one of ’em as does! If so be as you know the family, sir, you’ll know the young gentleman. Don’t you know Mr. Gervase?—eh, not the young ’un, sir, as is Sir Giles’s heir? Oh, Lord, if you don’t know him you don’t know Greyshott Manor, nor what’s going on there.”

“I have never seen the young gentleman,” said Gerald; “I believe he is not very often at home.”

“I don’t know about ’ome, but ’e’s ’ere as often as ’e can be. ’E’d be ’ere mornin’, noon, and night if I’d ’a put up with it; but I see ’im, what ’e was after, and I’ll not ’ave my girl talked about, not for the best Piercey as ever trod in shoe-leather. And ’e ain’t the best, oh, not by a long chalk ’e ain’t. Sir Giles is dreadful pulled down with the rheumatics and that, but ’e was a man as was something like a man. Lord bless you, sir, this poor creature, ’e’s a Softy, and ’e’ll never be no more.”

“What do you mean by a Softy?” said Gerald, quickly; then he added with a sensation of shame, “Never mind, I don’t want you to tell me. Don’t you think you should be a little more careful what you say, when a young man like this comes to your house?”

“What should I be careful for?” said Hewitt; “I ain’t noways beholdin’ to the Pierceys. They ain’t my landlords, ain’t the Piercey’s, though they give themselves airs with their Lords o’ the Manor, and all that. Hewitts of the Seven Thorns is as good as the Pierceys, and not beholdin’ to them, not for the worth of a brass fardin—oh, no! And I wouldn’t have the Softy about my house, a fool as opens ’is mouth and laughs in your face if you say a sensible word to ’im; not for me! Richard Hewitt’s not a-going to think twice what he says for a fool like ’im. Softy’s ’is name and Softy’s ’is nature: ask any man in the village who the Softy is, and they’ll soon tell you. Lord, it don’t matter a bit what I say.”

“Still, I suppose,” said Colonel Piercey, feeling a little nettled in spite of himself, “it is, after all, the first family in the neighbourhood.”

“First family be dashed,” cried Hewitt; “I’m as good a family as any of ’em. And I don’t care that, no, not that,” he cried, snapping his fingers, “for the Pierceys, if they was kings and queens, which they ain’t, nor no such big folks after all. Old Sir Giles, he’s most gone off his head with rheumatics and things; and my lady, they do say, she ’ave ’ad a stroke, and serve her right for her pride and her pryin’. And Mr. Gervase, he’s a Softy, and that’s all that’s to be said. They ain’t much for a first family when you knows all the rights and the wrongs of it,” Hewitt said.