‘By-and-by you give me another two,’ she said, growing lively again.  We agreed that it would be a good thing if we entered the village and bought something.  None of the shops were open.  We walked through the churchyard.  I said, ‘Here’s where dead people are buried.’

‘I’ll dance if you talk about dead people,’ said she, and began whooping at the pitch of her voice.  On my wishing to know why she did it, her reply was that it was to make the dead people hear.  My feelings were strange:  the shops not open, and no living people to be seen.  We climbed trees, and sat on a branch talking of birds’ eggs till hunger drove us to the village street, where, near the public-house, we met the man-tramp, who whistled.

He was rather amusing.  He remarked that he put no questions to me, because he put no question to anybody, because answers excited him about subjects that had no particular interest to him, and did not benefit him to the extent of a pipe of ’tobacco; and all through not being inquisitive, yesterday afternoon he had obtained, as if it had been chucked into his lap, a fine-flavoured fat goose honourably for his supper, besides bottles of ale, bottles of ginger-pop, and a fair-earned half-crown.  That was through his not being inquisitive, and he was not going to be inquisitive now, knowing me for a gentleman:  my master had tipped him half-a-crown.

Fortunately for him, and perhaps for my liberty, he employed a verb marvellously enlightening to a schoolboy.  I tipped him another half-crown.  He thanked me, observing that there were days when you lay on your back and the sky rained apples; while there were other days when you wore your fingers down to the first joint to catch a flea.  Such was Fortune!

In a friendly manner he advised me to go to school; if not there, then to go home.  My idea, which I had only partly conceived, was to have a look at Riversley over a hedge, kiss my aunt Dorothy unaware, and fly subsequently in search of my father.  Breakfast, however, was my immediate thought.  He and the girl sat down to breakfast at the inn as my guests.  We ate muttonchops and eggs, and drank coffee.  After it, though I had no suspicions, I noticed that the man grew thoughtful.  He proposed to me, supposing I had no objection against slow travelling, to join company for a couple of days, if I was for Hampshire, which I stated was the county I meant to visit.

’Well then, here now, come along, d ‘ye see, look,’ said he, ’I mustn’t be pounced on, and no missing young gentleman in my society, and me took half-a-crown for his absence; that won’t do.  You get on pretty well with the gal, and that ’s a screaming farce:  none of us do.  Lord! she looks down on such scum as us.  She’s gipsy blood, true sort; everything’s sausages that gets into their pockets, no matter what it was when it was out.  Well then, now, here, you and the gal go t’ other side o’ Bed’lming, and you wait for us on the heath, and we ’ll be there to comfort ye ’fore dark.  Is it a fister?’