The Vicar's People Part 44

"The _what_?" said Uncle Paul.

"The Indian file--you," said Geoffrey, coolly.

Uncle Paul thumped his stick on the floor, and looked daggers.

"Look here, young fellow," he said, sharply, "you go a deal too much to Gwennas Cove, and it don't look well."

"Haven't been half so often lately," said Geoffrey, coolly.

"You go ten times too much. Look here, boy, have you seen how pale and ill that jade, Madge, looks?"

"No. Yes, to be sure, I did think she looked white."

"Fretting, sir, fretting. Now look here, boy, it isn't square."

"What isn't?" said Geoffrey, coolly.

"So much of that going to Gwennas Cove, and rescuing young women from infuriated mobs, and that sort of thing. Lady very grateful?"

"Very."

"Humph! Bewitched you?"

"Not yet."

"Humph! Going to?"

"Don't know."

"d.a.m.n you, Geoffrey Trethick," cried the old man, "you'd provoke a saint."

"Which you are not."

"Who the devil ever said I was, sir? Now, look here, you dog, I warned you when you came that I'd have no courting."

"_You_ can't stop courting," laughed Geoffrey. "It would take a giant."

"None of your confounded banter, sir. I told you I'd have no courting-- no taking notice of that jade--and you've disobeyed me."

"Not I," said Geoffrey.

"Don't contradict, puppy. I say you have."

"All right."

"The jade's going about the house red-eyed, and pale, and love-sick-- confound her!--about you, and now you make her miserable by playing off that brown-skinned fish-wench with the dark eyes."

Geoffrey's conscience smote him as he thought of that day when he playfully kissed Madge, and asked himself whether she really cared for him now, but only to feel sure that she did not.

"Does this sort of thing please you?" he said.

"Confound you! No, sir, it does not. Act like a man if you can, and be honest, or--confound you, sir!--old as I am, and old-fashioned as I am-- damme, sir--laws or no laws, I'll call you out and shoot you. You sha'n't trifle with the girl's feelings while I'm here."

Geoffrey's first impulse was to say something banteringly; but he saw that the old man was so much in earnest that he took a quiet tone.

"Uncle Paul," he said, "why will you go on running your head against a brick wall?"

"What do you mean, boy?"

"Only that you have got a notion in your head, and it seems useless for me to try and get it out. I'm busy and bothered, and have a deal to think about, so, once for all, let me tell you that I have hardly ever paid Miss Mullion the slightest attention, and, what is more, I am not so conceited as to believe she is making herself uncomfortable about me."

The old man glared hard at him and uttered a grunt, for the eyes that met his were as frank and calm as could be.

"Then all I can say is that if what you say is true--"

"Which it is--perfectly true," replied Geoffrey.

"Then it's very strange," grumbled the old man. "She never went on like this before. Have another cheroot, Trethick?"

"Now that's the most sensible thing I've heard you say to-day," said Geoffrey, smiling, as he took one of the great black cheroots. "I say, old fellow, these are very good. What do they cost you a-box?"

"Five pounds a hundred," said the old man, quietly.

"What?" cried Geoffrey.

"Shilling apiece, boy."

"Why I--'pon my word, sir, really I'm ashamed to take them."

"Bah! stuff!" cried the old man. "Do you suppose, because I live here in this quiet way, that I'm a pauper? Smoke the cigar, boy. Here's a light."

Geoffrey lit up, and inwardly determined that in future he would keep to his pipe, while the old man sat watching him.

"So you mean to make the mine pay, eh, Trethick?" he said.

"Yes, I believe I shall, Mr Paul," said Geoffrey, quietly. "I'm not starting with the idea of a fortune, but on the principles of which I have often told you of getting a profit out of a mine by economy, new means of reducing the ore, and living where others would fail."

"Humph!" said the old man, looking at him thoughtfully, and they smoked on in silence.

"I was a bit bilious this morning," said Uncle Paul at last, in an apologetic tone.

"Yes," said Geoffrey, "I saw that."

"Parson called and upset me. Wanted me to go and take the chair at a missionary meeting for the Hindoos, and I told him that the Hindoos and Buddhists ought to send missionaries to us. But don't take any notice."

"Not I, old gentleman," said Geoffrey, laughing. "I rather like it."

"Humph! I rather like you too, boy. You seem to do my biliousness good. You can stand a bullying without flying out. I haven't found a fellow stand it so well since I left the coolies."