of opposition, he felt that another offer of marriage might now be made with decorum, seeing that it was a full year since the last.  Mr. Blee therefore begged for a half-holiday, put on his broadcloth, blacked his boots, anointed his lion-monkey fringe and scanty locks with pomatum, and set forth.  Mrs. Coomstock’s house stood on the hill rising into the village from Chagford Bridge.  A kitchen garden spread behind it; in front pale purple poppies had the ill-kept garden to themselves.

As he approached, Mr. Blee felt a leaden weight about his newly polished boots, and a distinct flutter at the heart, or in a less poetical portion of his frame.

“Same auld feeling,” he reflected.  “Gormed if I ban’t gettin’ sweaty ’fore the plaace comes in sight!  ‘Tis just the sinkin’ at the navel, like what I had when I smoked my first pipe, five-and-forty years agone!”

The approach of another man steadied Billy, and on recognising him Mr. Blee forgot all about his former emotions and gasped in the clutch of a new one.  It was Mr. Lezzard, evidently under some impulse of genial exhilaration.  There hung an air of aggression about him, but, though he moved like a conqueror, his gait was unsteady and his progress slow.  He had wit to guess Billy’s errand, however, for he grinned, and leaning against the hedge waved his stick in the air above his head.

“Aw, Jimmery! if it ban’t Blee; an’ prinked out for a weddin’, tu, by the looks of it!”

“Not yourn, anyway,” snapped back the suitor.

“Well, us caan’t say ’zactly—­world ‘s full o’ novelties.”

“Best pull yourself together, Gaffer, or bad-hearted folks might say you was bosky-eyed.[10] That ban’t no novelty anyway, but ’t is early yet to be drunk—­just three o’clock by the church.”

[10] Bosky-eyed = intoxicated.

Mr. Blee marched on without waiting for a reply.  He knew Lezzard to be more than seventy years old and usually regarded the ancient man’s rivalry with contempt; but he felt uneasy for a few moments, until the front door of Mrs. Coomstock’s dwelling was opened to him by the lady herself.

“My stars!  You?  What a terrible coorious thing!” she said.

“Why for?”

“Come in the parlour.  Theer! coorious ban’t the word!”

She laughed, a silly laugh and loud.  Then she shambled before him to the sitting-room, and Billy, familiar enough with the apartment, noticed a bottle of gin in an unusual position upon the table.  The liquor stood, with two glasses and a jug of water, between the Coomstock family Bible, on its green worsted mat, and a glass shade containing the stuffed carcass of a fox-terrier.  The animal was moth-eaten and its eyes had fallen out.  It could be considered in no sense decorative; but sentiment allowed the corpse this central position in a sorry scheme of adornment, for the late timber merchant had loved it.  Upon Mrs. Coomstock’s parlour walls hung Biblical German prints in frames of sickly yellow wood; along the window-ledge geraniums and begonias flourished, though gardeners had wondered to see their luxuriance, for the windows were seldom opened.