So she saw him, and heard how he had been tramping
through Holne and stopped for a drink and sang a song to the people in the
bar. It happened that Mr. Churchward, the innkeeper, wanted a message took
to my sister about some geese, and none would go for fear of snow, so the
tramp, for Bob was no better, said that he would go, if they'd put him in
the way and give him a shilling. And Churchward trusted him, because he
said that he reminded him of his dead brother. Though that wasn't nothing
in his favour, seeing what Henry Churchward had been in life.
However, Bob earned his money and came along, and Mary saw him and took
him in, and let him shake the snow off himself and eat and drink. Then
began the famous blizzard, and I've often thought old Bob must have known
it was coming. At any rate there was no choice but to let him stop, for it
would have been death to turn him out again. So he stopped, and when the
bad weather was over, he wouldn't go. There's no doubt my sister always
liked the man in a way; but women like a man in such a lot of different
ways that none could have told exactly how, or why, she set store on him.
For that matter she couldn't herself. Indeed I axed her straight out and
she tried to explain and failed. It wasn't his outer man, for he had a
face like a rat, with a great, ragged, grey moustache, thicker on one side
than t'other, and eyebrows like anybody else's whiskers.
Pages:
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85