Cobley heard nought either; and then there come a nice open sort of
morning with just a promise of another spring in the air, and when Milly
looked out of her chicket window, who should she see in their ruinous
cabbage patch but Jack with his tools going leisurely to work to clean the
dirty ground.
She told her aunt, and they talked a bit and come to a conclusion afore
they asked him in to have a bite of breakfast.
"'Tis clear he's jobbing for the owner," said Jane Pedlar. "No doubt he'll
very soon put a different face on the ground, such an orderly man as him,
and such a lover of the soil; but I'm sorry in a way."
"Why for?" asked her niece. "A nicer man than Mr. Cobley don't walk."
"A very nice man indeed if it wasn't for his face," admitted the old
woman, "and I've got to like even his face, because of his gentle and
doggy eyes; but I'm sorry, because this shows only too clear the general
opinion touching Mr. Cobley is the right one."
"And what's the general opinion?" inquired Milly.
"That he's come home so poor as he went off," answered Jane Pedlar.
"Because if he'd saved a little money he wouldn't be doing rough work for
another man."
Milly saw the force of that and said no more at the time.
And then Cobley spoke to his mother one night and owned to a gathering
dejection.
"I like to see a job through," he said, "and I'm casting around pretty far
and wide for a man that might be good enough for that girl.
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