“Governor settin’ up in a new line?” asked Sam, slowly contemplating the caravan and a large tarpaulin-covered wagon that stood beside it with shafts resting on the ground.

“If, my friend, you allude to Mr. Christopher Hucks, he is not setting up in any new line, but pursuing a fell career on principles which (I am credibly informed) are habitual to him, and for which I can only hope he will be sorry when he is dead.  The food, sir, of Mr. Christopher Hucks is still the bread of destitution; his drink, the tears of widows; and the groans of the temporarily embarrassed supply the music of his unhallowed feast.”

“There is a bit o’ that about the old man, until you get to know him,” assented Sam cheerfully.

“Mr. Christopher Hucks—­” began the stranger with slow emphasis, dropping a peeled potato into the bucket and lifting a hand with an open clasp-knife towards heaven.

But here a voice from within the caravan interrupted him.

“Stanislas!”

“My love?”

“I can’t find the saucepan.”

A lady appeared at the hatch of the doorway above.  Her hair hung in disarray over her well-developed shoulders, and recent tears had left their furrows on a painted but not uncomely face.

“I—­I—­well, to confess the truth, I pawned it, my bud.  Dear, every cloud has its silver lining, and meanwhile what shall we say to a simple fry?  You have an incomparable knack of frying.”

“But where’s the dripping?”

Her husband groaned.

“The dripping!  The continual dripping!  Am I—­forgive the bitterness of the question—­but am I a stone, love?”

He asked it with a hollow laugh, and at the same time with a glance challenged Sam’s approval for his desperate pleasantry.

Sam jerked his thumb to indicate a wooden out-house on the far side of the yard.

“I got a shanty of my own across there, and a few fixin’s.  If the van’s anchored here, an’ I can set you up with odds-an’-ends such as a saucepan, you’re welcome.”

“A friend in need, sir, is a friend indeed,” said the stranger impressively; and Sam’s face brightened, for he had heard the proverb before, and it promised to bring the conversation, which he had found some difficulty in following, down to safe, familiar ground.  “Allow me to introduce you—­but excuse me, I have not the pleasure of knowing your name—­”

“Sam Bossom.”

“Delighted!  ‘Bossom’ did you say?  B—­O—­double S—­it should have been ‘Blossom,’ sir, with a slight addition; or, with an equally slight omission—­er—­’Bosom,’ if my Arabella will excuse me.  On two hands, Mr. Bossom, you narrowly escape poetry.” (Sam looked about him uneasily.) “But, as Browning says, ’The little more and how much it is, the little less and what miles away.’  Mine is Mortimer, sir—­Stanislas Horatio Mortimer.  You have doubtless heard of it?”

“Can’t say as I ’ave,” Sam confessed.