“I doan’ wan’ mor’ ‘en twenty uv the best, lidy, jus’ to mike a start—­an’ I doan’ wanter part wiv yer ‘and-writin’ niver.  So jes’ yer send two rustlers, wot means notes, of ten pun each, rigistered, to W. ’ickle spelt wiv a haitch, 2 H’apple Blossom Row, Coving Gardin, afore this toime ter-morrer.  An’ jes yer remember that h’as long as yer lives I’ve got yer bit of ‘andwritin.’  I ain’t goin’ ter use it, but some dye it might come in ’andy.  ’Ardly loikly as ’ow yer’d buy twenty pun wurf of veg from Wal ’ickle eh, lidy?—­it ’ud want some h’explanation.”

Then this soul made in the image and likeness of his God and found good, but hidden under the civilising process of the twentieth century which had given him the morals of a jackal and the status of a pariah dog, sighed as he looked round the dainty room.

“S’welp me,” he said, as he touched a satin cushion with his coarse, broken-nailed finger-tips, “h’if oi h’understand wye a woman the loikes uv you, wiv h’everyfink she wants, cawn’t run strite!”

“Oh! but,” whimpered the woman, “it was all the fault of the fog, really it was!”

“Garn!” replied the young ruffian as he opened the door and slammed it behind him.

CHAPTER XIV

  “Surely I am more brutish than any man!”—­The Bible.

And just about midsummer Fate tweaked the string to which was hobbled Susan Hetth.

A vulgar but resplendent bachelor middle-aged millionaire, sterling, not dollars, in order to set his gastronomic house in order, had taken a notion for the simple life for just as long as the notion should last, and a perfect bijou of a thatched cottage t’other side of Clovelly for a year.

With a notion of buying the cottage at Lee in which had dwelt the three historic maids, he had swept one day through the village in the latest thing in cars.

Baulked in his intent, and with time upon his podgy hands, he had rolled, minus the car, along the village path over the strippet of water and the sunbaked grass to the harbour.

There he had bent, with ardour and misgivings, to pick up Leonie’s towel, just as the soft wind caught her bathing cloak as she stretched out her hand with a smile of thanks.

She had grabbed at the cloak and missed it by a bit, so that it had swept behind her, hanging from one shoulder like some Grecian drapery, and the rotund little man had trotted round her draped side, picked up the cloak by the big button, and completed his trot, covering her up as he moved.

And as he trotted his little porcine eyes had glistened as they lingered upon the perfect figure, from the slim ankles to the confused face, and Leonie had blushed, though you could not have discerned it through the tan, pulled the cloak tighter and hurried across the road to the cottage gate.

But with the clumsy swiftness of the elephantine, the man had run after her and opened the cottage gate just as Susan Hetth opened the cottage door with the welcoming announcement that tea was ready.