But Dicky had always resented
it as he resented it now, wheeling round, shaking his stick, and
sputtering maledictions. A stone or two flew harmlessly by.
The Emigrant did not interfere.
As yet no one had recognised him. He had arrived the night before, and
taken a room at the Pack-horse, nobody asking his name; had sat after
supper in a corner of the smoking-room and listened to the gossip there,
saying nothing.
"Who's he travellin' for?" somebody had asked of Abel Walters, the
landlord. "He ain't a commercial. He han't got the trunks, only a
kit-bag. By the soft hat he wears I should say _a_ agent in advance.
Likely we'll have a circus before long."
His father and mother were dead these ten years. He had sent home money
to pay the funeral expenses and buy a substantial headstone. But he had
not been up to the cemetery yet. He was not a sentimental man.
Still, he had expected his return to make some little stir in
Tregarrick, and now a shade of disappointment began to creep over his
humour.
He flung away the end of his cigar and strolled up the sunny pavement to
a sweetshop where he had once bought ha'porths of liquorice and
cinnamon-rock. The legend, "E. Hosking, Maker of Cheesecakes to Queen
Victoria," still decorated the window. He entered and demanded a pound
of best "fairing," smiling at the magnificence of the order.
Mrs. Hosking--her white mob--cap and apron clean as ever--offered him a
macaroon for luck, and weighed out the sweets.
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