Now, the chance that works for certain purposes sent a smart shower from the sinking sun, and the wet sent two strangers for shelter in the lane behind the hedge where the boys reclined.  One was a travelling tinker, who lit a pipe and spread a tawny umbrella.  The other was a burly young countryman, pipeless and tentless.  They saluted with a nod, and began recounting for each other’s benefit the daylong-doings of the weather, as it had affected their individual experience and followed their prophecies.  Both had anticipated and foretold a bit of rain before night, and therefore both welcomed the wet with satisfaction.  A monotonous betweenwhiles kind of talk they kept droning, in harmony with the still hum of the air.  From the weather theme they fell upon the blessings of tobacco; how it was the poor man’s friend, his company, his consolation, his comfort, his refuge at night, his first thought in the morning.

“Better than a wife!” chuckled the tinker.  “No curtain-lecturin’ with a pipe.  Your pipe an’t a shrew.”

“That be it!” the other chimed in.  “Your pipe doan’t mak’ ye out wi’ all the cash Saturday evenin’.”

“Take one,” said the tinker, in the enthusiasm of the moment, handing a grimy short clay.  Speed-the-Plough filled from the tinker’s pouch, and continued his praises.

“Penny a day, and there y’are, primed!  Better than a wife?  Ha, ha!”

“And you can get rid of it, if ye wants for to, and when ye wants,” added tinker.

“So ye can!” Speed-the-Plough took him up.  “And ye doan’t want for to.  Leastways, t’other case.  I means pipe.”

“And,” continued tinker, comprehending him perfectly, it don’t bring repentance after it.”

“Not nohow, master, it doan’t!  And”—­Speed-the-Plough cocked his eye—­ “it doan’t eat up half the victuals, your pipe doan’t.”

Here the honest yeoman gesticulated his keen sense of a clincher, which the tinker acknowledged; and having, so to speak, sealed up the subject by saying the best thing that could be said, the two smoked for some time in silence to the drip and patter of the shower.

Ripton solaced his wretchedness by watching them through the briar hedge.  He saw the tinker stroking a white cat, and appealing to her, every now and then, as his missus, for an opinion or a confirmation; and he thought that a curious sight.  Speed-the-Plough was stretched at full length, with his boots in the rain, and his head amidst the tinker’s pots, smoking, profoundly contemplative.  The minutes seemed to be taken up alternately by the grey puffs from their mouths.

It was the tinker who renewed the colloquy.  Said he, “Times is bad!”

His companion assented, “Sure-ly!”

“But it somehow comes round right,” resumed the tinker.  “Why, look here. 
Where’s the good o’ moping?  I sees it all come round right and tight. 
Now I travels about.  I’ve got my beat.  ’Casion calls me t’other day to
Newcastle!—­Eh?”