“Well, you are a gentleman, sir!” said Gentleman Jan.

“And so are you,” said Claude.  “Now I’ll show you some more sketches.”

“I should like to know, sir,” asked Willis, “how you got at that likeness.  She would not hear of the thing, and that’s why I had no liking to come troubling you about nothing.”

Claude told them, and Jan laughed heartily, while Willis said,—­

“Do you know, sir, that’s a relief to my mind.  There is no sin in being drawn, of course; but I didn’t like to think my maid had changed her mind, when once she’d made it up.”

So the deputation retired in high glee, after Willis had entreated
Claude and Beer to keep the thing a secret from Grace.

It befell that Claude, knowing no reason why he should not tell Frank Headley, told him the whole story, as a proof of the chivalry of his parishioners, in which he would take delight.

Frank smiled, but said little; his opinion of Grace was altering fast.  A circumstance which occurred a few days after altered it still more.

Scoutbush had gone forth, as he threatened, and exploded in every direction, with such effect as was to be supposed.  Everybody promised his lordship to do everything.  But when his lordship’s back was turned, everybody did just nothing.  They knew very well that he could not make them do anything; and what was more, in some of the very worst cases, the evil was past remedy now, and better left alone.  For the drought went on pitiless.  A copper sun, a sea of glass, a brown easterly blight, day after day, while Thurnall looked grimly aloft and mystified the sailors with—­

“Fine weather for the Flying Dutchman, this!”

“Coffins sail fastest in a calm.”

“You’d best all out to the quay-head, and whistle for a wind:  it would be an ill one that would blow nobody good just now!”

But the wind came not, nor the rain; and the cholera crept nearer and nearer:  while the hearts of all in Aberalva were hardened, and out of very spite against the agitators, they did less than they would have done otherwise.  Even the inhabitants of the half-a-dozen cottages, which Scoutbush, finding that they were in his own hands, whitewashed by main force, filled the town with lamentations over his lordship’s tyranny.  True—­their pig-styes were either under their front windows; or within two feet of the wall:  but to pull down a poor man’s pig-stye!—­they might ever so well be Rooshian slaves!—­and all the town was on their side; for pigs were the normal inhabitants of Aberalva back-yards.

Tardrew’s wrath, of course, knew no bounds; and meeting Thurnall standing at Willis’s door, with Frank and Mellot, he fell upon him open-mouthed.

“Well, sir!  I’ve a crow to pick with you.”

“Pick away!” quoth Tom.

“What business have you meddling between his lordship and me?”

“That is my concern,” quoth Tom, who evidently was not disinclined to quarrel.  “I am not here to give an account to you of what I choose to do.”