"The minute I get well I shall find out from Mrs. Cloke what every Lashmar gives in doles (that's nicer than tips) every time a Lashmite is born. I've done my duty thus far, but there's much expected of me."Entered here Mrs. Cloke, and hung worshipping over the cot. They showed her the mug and her face shone. "Oh, now Lady Conant's sent it, it'll be all proper, ma'am, won't it? 'George' of course he'd have to be, but seein' what he is we was hopin'--all your people was hopin'--it 'ud be 'Lashmar' too, and that'ud just round it out. A very 'andsome mug quite unique, I should imagine.
'Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle.' That's true with the Lashmars, I've heard. Very slow to fill their houses, they are. Most like Master George won't open 'is nursery till he's thirty.""Poor lamb!" cried Sophie. "But how did you know my folk were Lashmars?"Mrs. Cloke thought deeply. "I'm sure I can't quite say, ma'am, but I've a belief likely that it was something you may have let drop to young Iggulden when you was at Rocketts. That may have been what give us an inkling. An' so it came out, one thing in the way o' talk leading to another, and those American people at Veering Holler was very obligin' with news, I'm told, ma'am.""Great Scott!" said George, under his breath. "And this is the simple peasant!""Yiss," Mrs. Cloke went on. "An' Cloke was only wonderin' this afternoon--your pillow's slipped my dear, you mustn't lie that a-way--just for the sake o' sayin' something, whether you wouldn't think well now of getting the Lashmar farms back, sir.
They don't rightly round off Sir Walter's estate. They come caterin' across us more. Cloke, 'e 'ud be glad to show you over any day.""But Sir Walter doesn't want to sell, does he?""We can find out from his bailiff, sir, but"--with cold contempt--"I think that trained nurse is just comin' up from her dinner, so 'm afraid we'll 'ave to ask you, sir ... Now, Master George--Ai-ie! Wake a litty minute, lammie!"A few months later the three of them were down at the brook in the Gale Anstey woods to consider the rebuilding of a footbridge carried away by spring floods. George Lashmar Chapin wanted all the bluebells on God's earth that day to eat, and--Sophie adored him in a voice like to the cooing of a dove; so business was delayed.
"Here's the place," said his father at last among the water forget-me-nots. "But where the deuce are the larch-poles, Cloke?
I told you to have them down here ready.""We'll get 'em down if f you say so," Cloke answered, with a thrust of the underlip they both knew.
"But I did say so. What on earth have you brought that timber-tug here for? We aren't building a railway bridge. Why, in America, half-a-dozen two-by-four bits would be ample.""I don't know nothin' about that," said Cloke.
"An' I've nothin' to say against larch--IF you want to make a temp'ry job of it. I ain't 'ere to tell you what isn't so, sir;an' you can't say I ever come creepin' up on you, or tryin' to lead you further in than you set out--"A year ago George would have danced with impatience. Now he scraped a little mud off his old gaiters with his spud, and waited.
"All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp'ry job of it; and by the time the young master's married it'll have to be done again. Now, I've brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as we've ever drawed. You put 'em in an'
it's off your mind or good an' all. T'other way--I don't say it ain't right, I'm only just sayin' what I think--but t'other way, he'll no sooner be married than we'll lave it all to do again.
You've no call to regard my words, but you can't get out of that.""No," said George after a pause; "I've been realising that for some time. Make it oak then; we can't get out of it."
