Boy Woodburn Part 9

"I've warned him off," he said, "you might snout about a bit and rout out what he _is_ after."

The other nodded.

"Monkey's the man, sir," he said, and stole away on tip-toe.

That evening the old trainer, driving through the village, came on the discomfited artist and drew up to have a word with him.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" began the old man in his sympathetic wheeze. "This _is_ a bad job to be sure, Mr. Joses. So that long mare o'

mine had a shot at your pore brain-box. When I heard, I wep' a tear, I did reelly." He shook a sorrowful head. "You mustn't come no more, though, Mr. Joses, you mustn't. If anything was to 'appen to you in my place I should never forgive meself. 'Tain't so much the compensation to your widows and such. It's _here_"--he thumped his heart--"I'd feel it."

Joses began to make excuse, but the old man refused to be convinced.

"Rogues and rasqueals, Mr. Joses," he cried. "Layin' pitchforks for yer feet--same as the Psalmist says. Hosses is much the very same as men.

Kilted cattle, as the sayin' is. Once they turn agin' you your number's up. And they got _somefin'_ agin' you. No fault o' yours, I know--G.o.dly genelman like you. But where it is _there_ it is!" He sat in his buggy and wiped his dewy eye. "And there's the dorg, Mr. Joses. Big dorg, too!"

Joses, ejected from Putnam's, as Adam had been from Paradise, might be the loser; but Art certainly was not.

For he painted abominably.

Even the lads jeered at his efforts, while Old Mat said:

"I reck'n my old pony could do better than that, if I filled her tail with paint and she sat on it."

But Joses was not to be beaten so easily. Meeting Boy Woodburn in the village street, he asked her if he might paint Billy Bluff.

The girl, knowing Billy's views on Mr. Joses, excused herself and her dog.

Joses walked down the village street with her, expostulating.

Mrs. Haggard, the vicar's wife, an austere woman, with a jealously guardian eye for all the village maidens, met the pair and eyed the girl severely.

Later in the day she came on Boy alone and stopped her.

"Do you know that man, Joyce?" she asked.

Mrs. Haggard was the one person in the world who called Boy by her Christian name. And she did it, as she did everything else, on principle.

"Not really," answered Boy.

"I don't like him," said Mrs. Haggard.

"Neither do I," answered the girl.

"I'm glad to hear it," said the other. "He's _not_ a nice man."

That evening Mrs. Haggard went to see Mrs. Woodburn and gave the trainer's wife some of her reasons--and they were good reasons, too--for thinking Mr. Joses _not_ a nice man.

Mrs. Woodburn, who was in the judgment of the vicar's wife a good but curious woman, showed herself distressingly undistressed.

"Boy can look after herself, I guess," she said, a thought grimly.

She reported later to Mat what Mrs. Haggard had told her and what she had replied to Mrs. Haggard.

Old Mat agreed.

"She can bite all right," he said. "Trust Boy."

And Boy, as she walked down the hillside on leaving Mr. Silver and the old mare, felt like biting.

She was annoyed with Mr. Silver, annoyed with Joses, and, above all, annoyed with herself.

She had been mischievous, and now she was being punished for it.

She did not like Joses; and she _did_ like being alone in the wood at dusk.

Her companion walked too close to her; he laughed too much; she was aware of that haunted and haunting eye of his rolling at her continually; and he smelt of alcohol.

Also he would talk.

"That's Silver, is it?" he said familiarly, as they walked down the hill.

"That's _Mr._ Silver," she retorted.

His eye sought hers, questioning; but found nothing save a proud, cold face.

"Your dadda's training for him, isn't he?" continued the fat man.

Her dadda!

The cheek of it!

"I don't know."

"He's a Croesus, isn't he?"

"He's _not_ a greaser," with warmth.

Joses laughed his unpleasant laughter.

"A Croesus, I said. Rolling. He's the Bank of Brazil and Uruguay."

"I don't know," replied the girl. "I haven't asked."