When she heard the coach well on its way again on the Chipstone road, with Blanche divined within, she found herself possessed by an unexpected urging towards Mr. Flippance. She had no real round any longer—only the hours to fill and her grandfather to half deceive—and perhaps, despite Miss Gentry’s own opinion, the bridegroom might yet be able to prevent her being cut out by the rival pair of scissors. The truth was, Jinny felt a physical need of the toning up the Showman somehow imparted to life. To drive around the rest of the day with practically no business but her own thoughts would be too dreadful. He must surely babble happily about his bride, and apart from the interest of her identity, some of his glow could not but radiate to her. And there was Caleb and Martha to see, too—how were they faring, these dear, simple creatures, too long unvisited? But then—thought that froze the heart!—had she not declared she would never set foot in Frog Farm again? No, she answered herself defiantly—and no memory of hereditary quibbling, nothing of her sense of humour, rose to trouble the reply—all she had said was that Will should never see her there. And Will was safely chained to the Chipstone road.

All the same she looked round apprehensively and with wildly beating heart before she allowed Methusalem to lift the latch of the familiar gate, and she had somehow expected so great a transformation in the farmhouse under its new and sinister activities, and was conscious of so vast a change in herself since she had last seen it, that its primitive black front almost startled her, so unchanged did it appear. True, the ferrets’ cages were gone, but their absence only made it more its old self, and the moan of the doves was as reassuring as the singing of the kettle on her own hearth. Caleb’s red shirt-sleeves looked for once in keeping with the scene, arising as they did out of yellow flame-tinged clouds from the rubbish-heap which he was burning, and the pleasant pungent smell of which filled her eyes with tears, half smoke, half emotion. Even in that glow the homely hair-circled face was capable of a new illumination.

“Gracious goodness, there’s Jinny!” He ran to the house-door. “Mother! Mother!” he cried in jubilant agitation.

Martha emerged at a hobbling run, apron-girded. Despite the glow, her face darkened.

“You give a body a turn,” she grumbled. “I almost thought ’twas the Golden City coming down.”

“’Tis nigh as good,” he retorted boldly, “bein’ as Jinny was same as gone there. And bless me, ef she don’t look ghosty!”

“Good morning, Jinny!” said Martha coldly. “We don’t need a carrier now—with our coach to get everything.”

Jinny’s cheeks turned far from “ghosty.” “I haven’t come to you—only to Mr. Flippance.”

“But he gets everything, too, through Willie.”

“I know that—I merely want to speak to him.”

“You can’t now.”

“The missus means he’s abed,” Caleb explained, rushing to Jinny’s relief, and indeed the information brought a smile back to her twitching lips. “Minds me of a great old tortoise, diggin’ hisself into his blankets. Do him good to be up with the sun, same as when Oi was a scarecrow, soon as the wheat was sown.”

“You don’t want to tell everybody you began as a scarecrow,” said Martha frigidly.

“Ef we’re rich now, dear heart, and can ride in our own coach, ’tis the Lord’s hand, not ours. Oi watched over wheat and winter beans, and ’arly peas, and winter oats, and then spring barley, but all the time the Lord was watchin’ over me.”

“Not as a scarecrow,” said Martha severely.

“Oi warn’t a scarecrow ploughin’-time, bein’ set on the middle hoss to flick the whip, and chance times when ’twas too frosty to plough Oi went to Dame Pippler’s to school.”

“I never heard that before,” said Martha.

“Dedn’t like to tell ye,” he confessed, “being as ’twas too cowld to howd the slate-pencil, and the book-larnin’ leaked out ’twixt the frosts. ’Twas a penny a week wasted.”

Martha saw their visitor was amused at this revelation after fifty years of wedlock. “Jinny wants to be going on,” she observed testily. “Look at all her boxes.”

“Oi’m proper pleased to see ’em, for as Oi says to Willie, Oi hope as you ain’t hart Jinny’s business and grieved the Lord. Ye can’t sleep, Oi says, ef ye’ve grieved the Lord.”

“Then Mr. Flippance must be a saint,” laughed Jinny. But she was touched to tears.

Caleb had, however, not finished his apologia for his lack of learning, and was to be diverted neither by Jinny’s jests nor his wife’s grimaces. “And in the summer,” he explained carefully, “Oi got to goo out with my liddle old gun agin they bird-thieves, though peas and pebbles was all the shot my feyther——”

“Can’t you try some at Mr. Flippance’s window?” interrupted Jinny, fearful the fretful Martha would soon close her door upon her.

“Oi’d have to stand sideways for that!” He pointed to a hooked-back casement. “Fust he kivers hisself up, then he opens hisself out”—he chuckled contemptuously—“’tis ‘in dock, out nettle,’ as the sayin’ goos.”

Jinny lifted her little horn to her lips and blew a blast so literally rousing that hardly had its echoes died than from the black casement framework a red unshaven face, like the rayed rising sun on an inn signboard, dawned above clouds of flamboyant dressing-gown.

“Jinny! Hurrah!” cried the apparition in delighted surprise. “The very person I’ve been wanting for weeks!”

In the effulgence of that great rubicund sphere of a face Jinny’s mists began to dissolve—after all, with all his faults he belonged to her rosy past, to the good old times ere black horses or red men had arisen to rend her. “Then why didn’t you let me know?” she smiled.

“Just what I was thinking of doing. So glad you’ve saved me a letter. Never was so hard-worked in my life. Good morning, ma,” he threw to Mrs. Flynt, whose set face now relaxed into a maternal mildness, “do I smell breakfast?”

“Ye could ha’ smelt it afore seven, friend,” said Caleb, growing dour as Martha grew soft. “And the missus a bit paltry to-day, too!”

“Am I late? I’m so sorry. Why, I thought it was Will’s horn!”

“Mr. Flippance overslept himself, dearie,” Martha said reproachfully.

“But you hate food spilin’,” Caleb protested.

“Not so much as I hate spoilt food!” said Tony. “Not that a good housekeeper like Mrs. Flynt would really let food spoil—any more than you your wheat-patch.”

“Ef ye had helped gittin’ that bit o’ corn in,” retorted Caleb, “ye’d fare to have more to sleep on.”

“There’s more than one kind of work, Caleb,” said Martha severely. “There’s brain-work for them that have never been scarecrows.”

“Yes, indeed, Mrs. Flynt!” said Tony earnestly. “I’m worked to a shadow.”

“And there was no such hurry to get the corn in,” Martha added.

“With all they prayers for rine gooin’ on, ye can’t be too careful,” Caleb urged.

“But what work had you got, Mr. Flippance?” Jinny laughed.

“Getting married. Didn’t you know?”

She was startled. “But you’re not married already?”

“No such luck. When the lady says ‘Yes,’ you think all your troubles are over. But they’re only beginning.”

Caleb’s face relaxed in a grin, whereupon Martha’s hardened to a frown. “Marriage is no laughing matter,” she said, with a glower at her husband.

“No, indeed, Mrs. Flynt!” endorsed Tony. “What with the forms and questions and ceremonies and witnesses and what not, and rings to buy and bouquets to order—it’s worse than a dress rehearsal!”

“But you’ve had the rehearsal,” Jinny reminded him.

“I was young and strong. Now you’ve got to help me.”

“Me?” Jinny was enchanted at this smoothing of the path for Miss Gentry. “But I’m so busy,” she protested professionally. “I can’t wait till you’re up.”

“Jinny’s too busy,” Martha corroborated. And in her eagerness to be rid of the girl, she unconsciously clucked to Methusalem, and so exactly like Jinny that the noble animal actually started.

“Wait! Wait!” Mr. Flippance shouted down wildly. “Do wait! Such a lot to consult you about. Haven’t even got a best man yet. Find me one and I’ll call down blessings on your head!”

“I don’t want you to call them down,” she jested up. “That’s the trouble.”

“I’ll be down before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.’”

“I wasn’t going to suggest him!” And she reined in her fiery steed.

Martha had hurried to her kitchen to bring in the belated breakfast, and the convulsion into which Jinny’s last remark appeared to throw Caleb was left unchecked by wifely grimaces. The veteran alternated between gurgles and roars so continuously that Jinny, flattered as she was by the reception of her jest, began to feel uneasy.

“That fair flabbergasted him,” he gasped, getting his breath at last. “How can Oi, says Oi, ef Oi’m a buoy-oy, Oi says.” He wiped the tears from his whiskered cheeks and blew his nose into his great “muckinger.”

“But he didn’t ask you to be best man,” she said, puzzled. “And you aren’t a boy.”

“’Twas master as called me a buoy-oy,” he explained, his eyes still dancing, “so as to keep down my wages. Oi’ve got three hosses same as the min, Oi says, and can plough my stetch similar-same as them and cut and trave up my corn better’n Bill Ravens as felt the teeth of the sickle two days arter he started and couldn’t work no more, though double-money time, as Oi can sartify bein’ as ’twar me what tied my neckercher round his arm with the blood pourin’ down like sweat, and lucky ’twarn’t his wife, Oi says, but another woman gooin’ behind him to be larnt how, she bein’ in confinement. But master he wouldn’t listen to nawthen. Oi’ll give you easy ploughin’ was all he promised, ye’re onny a buoy-oy, he says, obstinacious like, and Oi stayed on a bit, not mislikin’ the cans of tea the wives brought, all hot and sweet, and the big granary with pillars and fower on us thrashin’ and rattlin’ on the big oak floor, jolly as a harvest supper, and Bill Ravens—that be the feyther of the rollin’ stone as shears chance times for Master Peartree—singin’ like the saints in Jerusalem, all except for the words. But at last, bein’ as feyther wanted the money and Oi needed time to look for a farmer not so nippy, gimme a week off, says Oi to old Skindflint. A week off! says master. What for? Gooin’ to git married?”

At this point the convulsion recommenced, and Jinny, though she understood how the Flippance wedding had set his memories agog, had still to wait for enlightenment as to why they were agrin.

“Married, Oi says! How can Oi git married, ef Oi’m a buoy-oy?”

It was out at last, the great repartee of his life, and Jinny felt he was right to cherish its memory. She occupied the period of his renewed cachinnation in descending from her seat and giving Methusalem his impoverished nosebag. Her action reminded Caleb to offer to show her the enlarged stables, with the old roof raised to admit the coach. Then, colouring as if at an indelicacy, he hastily inquired how her grandfather was, remarking with commiseration that he must be getting a bit elderly.

Never had Jinny known him so loquacious—the absence of Martha was combining with her own advent to loosen his usually ruly member. And at last the pent-up flood of his grievances against the Showman burst forth. The return of Will, Jinny gathered, had been dislocating enough, even before his new-fangled coach had brought the stir of the great world and Bundock almost daily, but now the house and the hours were all “topsy-tivvy,” worse than in Cousin Caroline’s time. He would do Will the justice to say that it wasn’t his fault—Will had been against putting up a “furriner” in their spare bedroom—but the “great old sluggaby” had come and ingratiated himself so with the rheumatic but romantic Martha, and offered such startling prices—a pound a week for board and lodging—“enough to feed the whole Pennymole family for a fortnight”—that she had forced her will upon both the male Flynts. “The trouble with Martha is,” Caleb summed up, “she allus wants what she wants.” Mr. Flippance, he explained, “got a piper for her from her Lunnon Sin Agog—funny name that for the Lord’s House, even in Lunnon—and that piper fared to be all about the Christy Dolphins and their doin’s—the Loightstand, Martha called it. And she read me a piece out of it how Mr. Somebody, husband o’ Sister T’other, was baptized by Elder Somebody Else; and she wanted me to goo and do likewise.”

“But you are nearly one of them, aren’t you?” Jinny smiled.

He looked uneasy.

“Oi don’t want to be baptized a Jew,” he said plaintively. “Martha she argufies as Paul says we are the Jews, bein’ Abraham’s seed in our innards. So long as she calls us the Lord’s people, Oi fair itches to be one, but that goos agin the stomach like to call yourself a Jew. Same as she was satisfied with the New Jerusalem part, Oi’d goo with her. For ef the Book says, ‘No man hath gone up to heaven,’ or ‘Whither Oi goo, ye cannot come,’ that proves as heaven’s got to come to us, and happen Oi’ll live to see it droppin’ down with its street of pure gold same as transparent brass. But Oi won’t be swallowed up whole like a billy-owl swallows a mouse.”

“What’s that you’re saying, Caleb?” said Martha, now perceived back at her house-door.

“He was telling me about the Lightstand,” said Jinny glibly.

Martha beamed again. “Ah, it won’t be long before that light spreads, though now the world is all shrouded in darkness and superstition. But salvation is of the Jews.”

“That ain’t writ in the Book?” inquired Caleb anxiously.

“Salvation is of the Jews,” repeated Martha implacably. “John iv. 22. There’s nine of us now in Essex alone, the Lightstand says, not reckoning London. They don’t know about another that’s on the way Zionwards,” she added mysteriously.

“Meaning me?” said Caleb nervously.

“Meaning a man with brains and book-learning,” said Martha sternly, “and he’s ready to see you now, Jinny.”

“Well, nine ain’t no great shakes,” Caleb murmured.

“We are the salt of the earth,” Martha reminded him. “A pinch of salt goes a long way.”

“Ay, when it rolls in a pill-box,” Caleb reflected ruefully. “And hows the old chapel, Jinny?” he said aloud. “Willy never goos now.”

Jinny coloured up: one of her pretexts for apostacy seemed null and void.

“I’ll see you when I come out, I suppose,” she said evasively, as she followed Martha within.