CHAPTER XLI

On the Monday evening, Master Gammon was at the station with the cart.  Robert and Rhoda were a train later, but the old man seemed to be unaware of any delay, and mildly staring, received their apologies, and nodded.  They asked him more than once whether all was well at the Farm; to which he replied that all was quite well, and that he was never otherwise.  About half-an-hour after, on the road, a gradual dumb chuckle overcame his lower features.  He flicked the horse dubitatively, and turned his head, first to Robert, next to Rhoda; and then he chuckled aloud: 

“The last o’ they mel’ns rotted yest’day afternoon!”

“Did they?” said Robert.  “You’ll have to get fresh seed, that’s all.”

Master Gammon merely showed his spirit to be negative.

“You’ve been playing the fool with the sheep,” Robert accused him.

It hit the old man in a very tender part.

“I play the fool wi’ ne’er a sheep alive, Mr. Robert.  Animals likes their ’customed food, and don’t like no other.  I never changes my food, nor’d e’er a sheep, nor’d a cow, nor’d a bullock, if animals was masters.  I’d as lief give a sheep beer, as offer him, free-handed—­of my own will, that’s to say—­a mel’n.  They rots.”

Robert smiled, though he was angry.  The delicious unvexed country-talk soothed Rhoda, and she looked fondly on the old man, believing that he could not talk on in his sedate way, if all were not well at home.

The hills of the beacon-ridge beyond her home, and the line of stunted firs, which she had named “the old bent beggarmen,” were visible in the twilight.  Her eyes flew thoughtfully far over them, with the feeling that they had long known what would come to her and to those dear to her, and the intense hope that they knew no more, inasmuch as they bounded her sight.

“If the sheep thrive,” she ventured to remark, so that the comforting old themes might be kept up.

“That’s the particular ‘if!’” said Robert, signifying something that had to be leaped over.

Master Gammon performed the feat with agility.

“Sheep never was heartier,” he pronounced emphatically.

“Lots of applications for melon-seed, Gammon?”

To this the veteran’s tardy answer was:  “More fools ’n one about, I reckon”; and Robert allowed him the victory implied by silence.

“And there’s no news in Wrexby? none at all?” said Rhoda.

A direct question inevitably plunged Master Gammon so deep amid the soundings of his reflectiveness, that it was the surest way of precluding a response from him; but on this occasion his honest deliberation bore fruit.

“Squire Blancove, he’s dead.”

The name caused Rhoda to shudder.