“Which o’ your ears is burning?”

“Both.”

“Then it shu’d be the left ear only.  Old Zeb, here—­”

“Hush ’ee now, Prudy!” implored the crowder.

“—­Old Zeb here,” continued Prudy, relentlessly, “was only a-sayin’, as you walked in, that he’d read you the Riot Act afore you was many days older.  He’s mighty fierce wi’ your goin’s on, I ’sure ’ee.”

“Is that so, Mr. Minards?”

Mr. Minards had, it is probable, never felt so uncomfortable in all his born days, and the experience of standing between two fires was new to him.  He looked from the stranger around upon the company, and was met on all hands by the same expectant stare.

“Well, you see—­” he began, and looked around again.  The faces were inexorable.  “I declare, friends, the pore chap is drippin’ wet.  Sich a tiresome v’yage, too, as it must ha’ been from Plymouth, i’ this weather!  I dunno how we came to forget to invite en nigher the hearth.  Well, as I was a-sayin’—­”

He stopped to search for his hat beneath the settle.  Producing a large crimson handkerchief from the crown, he mopped his brow slowly.

“The cur’ous part o’t, naybours, is the sweatiness that comes over a man, this close weather.”

“I’m waiting for your answer,” put in the stranger, knitting his brows.

“Surely, surely, that’s the very thing I was comin’ to.  The answer, as you may say, is this—­but step a bit nigher, for there’s lashins o’ room—­the answer, as far as that goes, is what I make to you, sayin’—­ that if you wasn’ so passin’ wet, may be I’d blurt out what I had i’ my mind.  But, as things go, ‘twould seem like takin’ an advantage.”

“Not at all.”

“‘Tis very kind o’ you to say so, to be sure.”  Old Zeb picked up his pipe again.  “An’ now, friends, that this little bit of onpleasantness have a-blown over, doin’ ekal credit to both parties this New Year’s-eve, after the native British fashion o’ fair-play (as why shu’d it not?), I agree we be conformable to the pleasant season an’ let harmony prevail—­”

“Why, man,” interrupted Prudy, “you niver gave no answer at all.  ’Far as I could see you’ve done naught but fidget like an angletwitch and look fifty ways for Sunday.”

“’Twas the roundaboutest, dodge-my-eyedest, hole-an’-cornerdest bit of a chap’s mind as iver I heard given,” pronounced the traitorous Oke.

“Oke—­Oke,” Old Zeb exclaimed, “all you know ’pon the fiddle I taught ’ee!”

Said Prudy—­“That’s like what the chap said when the donkey kicked en.  ‘’Taint the stummick that I do vally,’ he said, ’’tis the cussed ongratefulness o’ the jackass.’”

“I’m still waiting,” repeated the stranger.

“Well, then”—­Old Zeb cast a rancorous look around—­“I’ll tell ’ee, since you’m so set ‘pon hearin’.  Afore you came in, the good folks here present was for drummin’ you out o’ the country.  ‘Shockin’ behayviour!’ ‘Aw, very shockin’ indeed!’ was the words I heerd flyin’ about, an’ ‘Who’ll make en sensible o’t?’ an’ ‘We’ll give en what-for.’  ’A silent tongue makes a wise head,’ said I, an’ o’ this I call Uncle Issy here to witness.”