But now the window was a better place to sit near.  Carts went by with men whistling as they walked by the horses heads.  Loads of things wanted for work at the Court.  New faces passed faces of workmen—­sometimes grinning, “impident youngsters,” who larked with the young women, and called out to them as they passed their cottages, if a good-looking one was loitering about her garden gate.  Old Doby chuckled at their love-making chaff, remembering dimly that seventy years ago he had been just as proper a young chap, and had made love in the same way.  Lord, Lord, yes!  He had been a bold young chap as ever winked an eye.  Then, too, there were the vans, heavy-loaded and closed, and coming along slowly.  Every few days, at first, there had come a van from “Lunnon.”  Going to the Court, of course.  And to sit there, and hear the women talk about what might be in them, and to try to guess one’s self, that was a rare pastime.  Fine things going to the Court these days—­furniture and grandeur filling up the shabby or empty old rooms, and making them look like other big houses—­same as Westerbridge even, so the women said.  The women were always talking and getting bits of news somehow, and were beginning to be worth listening to, because they had something more interesting to talk about than children’s worn-out shoes, and whooping cough.

Doby heard everything first from them.  “Dang the women, they always knowed things fust.”  It was them as knowed about the smart carriages as began to roll through the one village street.  They were gentry’s carriages, with fine, stamping horses, and jingling silver harness, and big coachmen, and tall footmen, and such like had long ago dropped off showing themselves at Stornham.

“But now the gentry has heard about Miss Vanderpoel, and what’s being done at the Court, and they know what it means,” said young Mrs. Doby.  “And they want to see her, and find out what she’s like.  It’s her brings them.”

Old Doby chuckled and rubbed his hands.  He knew what she was like.  That straight, slim back of hers, and the thick twist of black hair, and the way she had of laughing at you, as cheery as if a bell was ringing.  Aye, he knew all about that.

“When they see her once, they’ll come agen, for sure,” he quavered shrilly, and day by day he watched for the grand carriages with vivid eagerness.  If a day or two passed without his seeing one, he grew fretful, and was injured, feeling that his beauty was being neglected!  “None to-day, nor yet yest’day,” he would cackle.  “What be they folk a-doin’?”

Old Mrs. Welden, having heard of the pipe, and come to see it, had struck up an acquaintance with him, and dropped in almost every day to talk and sit at his window.  She was a young thing, by comparison, and could bring him lively news, and, indeed, so stir him up with her gossip that he was in danger of becoming a young thing himself.  Her groceries and his tobacco were subjects whose interest was undying.