But, of course, he hadn’t no business to get about, and though he talked in a vague sort of way concerning his home in Exeter and a brother up to Salisbury, it was all rubbish as he afterwards admitted.  He was a tramp, and nothing more, and the life at Little Sherberton and the good food and the warm lying at nights, evidently took his fancy.  So he stuck to it, and such was his natural cleverness and his power of being in the right place at the right moment that from the first nobody wished him away.  He was always talking of going, and it was always next Monday morning that he meant to start:  but the time went by and Bob Battle didn’t.  A very cunning man and must have been in farming some time of his life, for he knew a lot, and all worth knowing, and I’m not going to deny that he was useful to me as well as to my sister.

She was as good as a play with Bob, and me and my wife, and another married party here and there, often died of laughing to hear her talk about him.  Because the way that an unmarried female regards the male is fearful and wonderful to the knowing mind.

Mary spoke of him as if she’d invented him, and knew his works, like a clockmaker knows a clock.  He interested her something tremendous, and got to be her only subject presently.

“Mr. Battle was the very man for a farmer like me,” she said once, “and I’m sure I thank God’s goodness for sending him along.  He’s a proper bailiff about the place, and that clever with the men that nobody quarrels with him.  Of course he does nothing without consulting me; but he’s never mistaken, and apart from the worldly side of Mr. Battle, there’s the religious side.”

I hadn’t heard about that and didn’t expect to, for Mary, though a good straight woman, as wouldn’t have robbed a lamb of its milk, or done a crooked act for untold money, wasn’t religious in the church-going or Bible-reading sense, same as me and my wife were.  In fact she never went to church, save for a wedding or a funeral; but it appeared that Mr. Battle set a good bit of store by it, and when she asked him, if he thought so much of it, why he didn’t go, he said it was only his unfortunate state of poverty and his clothes and boots that kept him away.

“Not that the Lord minds,” said Bob, “but the churchgoers do, and a pair of pants like mine ain’t welcomed, except by the Salvationists; and I don’t hold with that body.”

So he got a suit of flame new clothes out of her and a new hat into the bargain; and then I said that he’d soon be a goner.  But I was wrong, for he stopped and went down to Huccaby Chapel for holy service twice a Sunday; and what’s more he kept it up.  And then, if you please, my sister went with him one day; and coming to it with all the charm of novelty, she took to it very kindly and got to be a right down church-goer, much to my satisfaction I’m sure.  And her up home five-and-sixty years old at the time!