“They do—­most of them,” answered Mr. Gurd.  “A back number is a back number and behaves as such.  I speak impartial being a bachelor, and I forgive the young men their nonsense and pardon their opinions, because I know I was young myself once, and as big a fool as anybody, and put just the same strain on my parents, no doubt, though they lived to see me a responsible man and done with childish things.  The point for parents is not to forget what it feels like to be young.  That I never have, and you young gentlemen would very soon remind me if I did.  But the late Mr. Henry Ironsyde found no time for all-round wisdom.  He poured his brains into hemp and jute and such like.  Why, he didn’t even make a minute to court and wed till he was forty-five year old.  And the result of that was that when his brace of boys was over twenty, he stood in sight of seventy and could only see life at that angle.  And what made it worse was, that his eldest, Mister Daniel, was cut just in his own pattern.  So the late gentleman never could forgive Mr. Raymond for being cut in another pattern.  But if what you say is right and Mister Raymond has been left out in the cold, then I think he’s been badly used.”

“So he has—­it’s a damned shame,” said Mr. Motyer, “and I hope Ray will do something about it.”

“There’s very little we can do against the writing of the dead,” answered Mr. Gurd.  Then he saluted a man who bustled into the bar.

“Morning, Job.  What’s the trouble?”

Job Legg was very tall and thin.  He dropped at the middle, but showed vitality and energy in his small face and rodent features.  His hair was black, and his thin mouth and chin clean-shaven.  His eyes were small and very shrewd; his manner was humble.  He had a monotonous inflection and rather chanted in a minor key than spoke.

“Mrs. Northover’s compliments and might we have the big fish kettle till to-morrow?  A party have been sprung on us, and five-and-twenty sit down to lunch in the pleasure gardens at two o’clock.”

“And welcome, Job.  Go round to the kitchen, will ’e?”

Job disappeared and Mr. Gurd explained.

“My good neighbour at ’The Seven Stars’—­her with the fine pleasure gardens and swings and so on.  And Job Legg’s her potman.  Her husband’s right hand while he lived, and now hers.  I have the use of their stable-yard market days, for their custom is different from mine.  A woman’s house and famous for her meat teas and luncheons.  She does very well and deserves to.”

“That old lady with the yellow wig?”

Mr. Gurd pursed his lips.

“To you she might seem old, I suppose.  That’s the spirit that puts a bit of a strain on the middle-aged and makes such men as me bring home to ourselves what we said and thought when we were young.  ’Tis just the natural, thoughtless insolence of youth to say Nelly Northover’s an old woman—­her being perhaps eight-and-forty.  And to call her hair a wig, because she’s fortified it with home-grown what’s fallen out over a period of twenty years, is again only the insolence of youth.  One can only say ’forgive ’em, for they know not what they do.’”