So many commissions clamoured for her from folk with relations in the flooded area that she had no difficulty in redeeming her dress from the pawnshop that very day. But it was not on account of the many calls upon her that she arrived home in the dark. It was because she had forgotten to command her faithful ferry’s attendance, and been forced to take the amazed Methusalem miles round by the farther bridge. Her grandfather would be anxious, she feared: then it occurred to her—not wholly with satisfaction—that he might have followed her day’s movements by telescope. But she found him as happy as she had left him, and with the hearth blazing like a bonfire, reckless of logs. He had not observed her rescue of the Flynts, for, as she had warned him, his overtaxed right eye had become inflamed and throbbed with little darts of pain, and he had been compelled to fall back on the voluptuous venom of his reflections, supplemented by a text which he had hunted out with his other eye.

“It come into my mind all of an onplunge,” he chuckled, putting a bony finger on a verse. “The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea,” she saw with a shudder. “That won’t be long afore he follows his hoss,” said the Gaffer grimly as he polished his lens for the spectacle. “Oi will sing to the Lord,” he read out, “for He hath triumphed gloriously.”

“Don’t be so wicked, Gran’fer,” she cried.

“Wicked! That’s roighteous—to sing to the Lord.”

“You don’t want people drowned!”

“Dedn’t he want us to starve?”

“Looks more like his starving now. We can afford to forgive. You’re reading the wrong end of the Bible, Gran’fer. We’ve got to turn the other cheek.”

“Sow Oi would, ef anybody was bussin’ me,” he cackled.

Jinny flushed and turned both her cheeks away.

“Why, the day Oi met Annie at Che’msford Fair——” he began.

“I don’t want to hear about Annie,” she said severely. “She wasn’t your wife.”

“That’s why I tarned from iniquity. But she ain’t nobody’s wife now.”

“No, poor thing!” she said. “And it’s a pity she’s Mr. Skindle’s mother, for he makes her do all the chares of his big new house.”

“Well, but she’s a woman, ain’t she?” he asked with unexpected lack of sympathy. “She’d have to do her husband’s chares.”

“Not at her age!”

“At her age? Annie’s a young woman.”

“Compared with you, perhaps,” she smiled.

“Git over me, her having a lad that size. Oi count she’s worritin’ over him, cooped up in Frog Farm.”

“Not now. They’re all safely out of it.”

“What! That pirate thief’s got safe!”

“Thank God!”

“That ain’t God’s doin’—that’s some evil interferin’ sperrit what comes out o’ dead bodies, says John Wesley. Who took ’em off?” he demanded fiercely.

“They came off in Bidlake’s barge,” she said weakly. “And don’t you be so unchristian. Isn’t it enough he’s——?”

“That ain’t right, interferin’ with the texts!” he interrupted doggedly. “Oi never could abide they Bidlakes. Ephraim’s grandfather come competitioning on the canals, wuss than Willie Flynt.”

“Well, Mr. Flynt can’t competition any more, can he? I expect,” she added with difficult lightness, “he’ll be coming round now to make friends.”

“Come round, will he? Just let him show his carroty head inside my doorway—he’ll be outside like fleck, Oi promise ye.”

“But if he wants to make it up——!”

“He’s got to goo down on his hands and knees fust.”

“Perhaps he will,” she suggested. Indeed she had little doubt of it. That wonderful moment, with its climax of mouth to mouth, had reduced this long foreseen obstacle to a grotesque bogy. In the light of mutual and confessed love the perspective changed, and if she had once thought that she could not have borne to see him grovel even for her sake, that it would actually impair the love grovelled for, she had now been uplifted into a plane of existence in which for him not to humour her grandfather seemed as childish as the nonagenarian’s own demand.

The old man now turned on her a red-rimmed probing eye. “He’d never come crawlin’ to me ef he warn’t arter summat. And he’s been tryin’ to git round you fust—don’t tell me! What’s his game?”

“Perhaps—he’d like—a partnership.”

“Oi dessay he would!” he chuckled ironically. “He’s got brass enough for anythin’. Why, the chap was arter you once. Ye dedn’t know it, but there ain’t much hid from Daniel Quarles. Oi suspicioned him the fust moment he come gawmin’ to the stable. And what’ll he bring to the pardnership? Cat’s-meat and matchwood?”

His coarseness jarred every nerve, but she kept to his key of jocosity. “Didn’t you say he had brass?”

“He, he, he!” he cackled. “But it’s the wrong kind o’ brass. Ef he wanted to be a pardner, why dedn’t he come when he had his coach and hosses?”

“He did. Don’t you remember?”

“Did he?” he said blankly. “Then why dedn’t Oi take ’em?”

“That was all my fault, Gran’fer.”

“No, it warn’t, dearie. It was ’cause he said Oi’d made muddles. Oi remember now. He come and swabbled, and chucked a pot at me. And he’s got to goo down on his hands and knees for it!”

Jinny saw it was hopeless to unravel these blended memories of Will and Elijah, as grotesquely interwoven as one of her own nightmares, on whose formation it seemed to throw light. She was glad, though, that the sharp edges of the actuality had now faded.

“Yes, yes—he shall,” she promised soothingly.

“And then there was that weddin’-cake what Mr. Flippance sent us,” burst up now from the labouring depths.

“Yes—wasn’t that a lovely cake?” she agreed.

“Oi offered him a shiver—shows ’twarn’t me as wanted to swabble. But he lifted his whip at me and Oi snapped it in two like my ole pipe when John Wesley stopped my smokin’. Oi don’t want no pardnerships.”

“Of course not, Gran’fer.”

“Daniel Quarles it’s been for a hundred year, and Daniel Quarles it’s a-gooin’ to remain.”

“Of course. Daniel Quarles.”

“And he’s got to goo down on his hands and knees.”

“And so have I,” she laughed, “for we’ve let our bonfire die down. Poor Mr. Flynt—he’s got a great admiration for you, spite that you’ve licked him.”

“Oi guessed you and him been gammickin’. You can’t hide much from Daniel Quarles. And ef that little Willie has got a proper respect for his elders and betters, that shows Oi larnt him a lesson.”

“You did, Gran’fer. He’s a changed man. There! Isn’t that a nice blaze again? He’s broken his right arm, too, poor fellow.”

But here she had blundered. The old man’s face lit up, not from the fire, but with a roaring flame of its own. “Thank the Lord,” he shouted, “as hears the prayer of the humble. The high arm shall be broken, says the Book, and it’s come true. The arm what dreft the hosses is broken like the coach!” He ended with a fresh cackle and rubbed his skinny hands before the blaze.

“You didn’t pray for that?” said Jinny, white and rebuking. “That was unchristian.”

“That’s what King David prayed, Jinny, and he was a man after God’s own heart. ‘Break thou the arm of the wicked’—Oi’ll show it you in the Psalm.”

“I don’t want to see it—King David wasn’t a Christian yet. And we’ve got to forgive and forget, and not bear a grudge for ever, especially when a man’s down. Think of John Wesley.”

“Happen you’re right, Jinny,” he said, softening. “We’ve got to forgive the evil-doer, and ef the Lord’s got him in hand Oi count we needn’t trouble—he’ll git all he desarves.”

And with that Jinny felt fairly content.