Malloring raised a finger to his cap and passed on. Though he felt
a longing to stride his feelings off, he did not increase his pace,
knowing that the old man's eyes were following him. But how pig-headed
they were, seeing nothing but their own point of view! Well, he could
not alter his decision. They would go at the June quarter--not a day
before, nor after.

Passing Tryst's cottage, he noticed a 'fly' drawn up outside, and its
driver talking to a woman in hat and coat at the cottage doorway. She
avoided his eye.

'The wife's sister again!' he thought. 'So that fellow's going to be an
ass, too? Hopeless, stubborn lot!' And his mind passed on to his scheme
for draining the bottom fields at Cantley Bromage. This village trouble
was too small to occupy for long the mind of one who had so many
duties....

Old Gaunt remained at the gate watching till the tall figure passed
out of sight, then limped slowly down the path and entered his
son's cottage. Tom Gaunt, not long in from work, was sitting in his
shirtsleeves, reading the paper--a short, thick-set man with small eyes,
round, ruddy cheeks, and humorous lips indifferently concealed by a
ragged moustache. Even in repose there was about him something talkative
and disputatious. He was clearly the kind of man whose eyes and wit
would sparkle above a pewter pot. A good workman, he averaged out an
income of perhaps eighteen shillings a week, counting the two shillings'
worth of vegetables that he grew. His erring daughter washed for two old
ladies in a bungalow, so that with old Gaunt's five shillings from the
parish, the total resources of this family of five, including two small
boys at school, was seven and twenty shillings a week. Quite a sum! His