’Come, old ’un, none of your d——­ old chaff, if you want me to stay here listening to you.  Speak out, can’t you?  There’s any chap as has bin a-lookin’ arter her—­is there?’

‘Eh bien!  I suppose some.’

’Well, you suppose, and I suppose—­we may all suppose, I guess; but that does not make a thing be, as wasn’t before; and you tell me as how the lass is kep’ private up there, and will be till you’re done educating her—­a precious good ‘un that is!’ And he laughed a little lazily, with the ivory handle of his cane on his lip, and eyeing Madame with indolent derision.

Madame laughed, but looked rather dangerous.

‘I’m only chaffin’, you know, old girl. You’ve bin chaffin’—­w’y shouldn’t I?  But I don’t see why she can’t wait a bit; and what’s all the d——­d hurry for? I’m in no hurry.  I don’t want a wife on my back for a while.  There’s no fellow marries till he’s took his bit o’ fun, and seen life—­is there!  And why should I be driving with her to fairs, or to church, or to meeting, by jingo!—­for they say she’s a Quaker—­with a babby on each knee, only to please them as will be dead and rotten when I’m only beginning?’

’Ah, you are such charming fellow; always the same—­always sensible.  So I and my friend we will walk home again, and you go see Maggie Hawkes.  Good-a-by, Dud—­good-a-by.’

‘Quiet, you fool!—­can’t ye?’ said the young gentleman, with the sort of grin that made his face vicious when a horse vexed him.  ’Who ever said I wouldn’t go look at the girl?  Why, you know that’s just what I come here for—­don’t you?  Only when I think a bit, and a notion comes across me, why shouldn’t I speak out?  I’m not one o’ them shilly-shallies.  If I like the girl, I’ll not be mug in and mug out about it.  Only mind ye, I’ll judge for myself.  Is that her a-coming?’

‘No; it was a distant sound.’

Madame peeped round the corner.  No one was approaching.

’Well, you go round that a-way, and you only look at her, you know, for she is such fool—­so nairvous.’

‘Oh, is that the way with her?’ said Dud, knocking out the ashes of his pipe on a tombstone, and replacing the Turkish utensil in his pocket.  ‘Well, then, old lass, good-bye,’ and he shook her hand.  ’And, do ye see, don’t ye come up till I pass, for I’m no hand at play-acting; an’ if you called me “sir,” or was coming it dignified and distant, you know, I’d be sure to laugh, a’most, and let all out.  So good-bye, d’ye see, and if you want me again be sharp to time, mind.

From habit he looked about for his dogs, but he had not brought one.  He had come unostentatiously by rail, travelling in a third-class carriage, for the advantage of Jack Briderly’s company, and getting a world of useful wrinkles about the steeplechase that was coming off next week.

So he strode away, cutting off the heads of the nettles with his cane as he went; and Madame walked forth into the open space among the graves, where I might have seen her, had I stood up, looking with the absorbed gaze of an artist on the ruin.