It was six months later and summer on the wane, when I met a fisherman on the river—­a gent I knew—­and made him laugh a good bit with the tale of they people.

“And what did Spider do after all, Mr. Bates?” inquired the fisher, when I came to the end of the story, and I answered him in a parable like.

“When the weasel sucked the robin’s eggs, sir, the robin and his wife was properly mad about it and swore as they’d be fearfully revenged upon him.”

“And what did they do?” axed the gentleman.

“What could they do?” I axed him back.

“Nothing.”

“That’s exactly what they did do; and that’s exactly what Nicky White done—­nothing.  Once—­in the street a bit after he’d come home—­Will Westaway turned round and saw Spider making hideous faces at him behind his back.  So he walked across the road and smacked the little man’s earhole and pulled his beard.  Nought happened, however.”

“And what became of William Westaway?”

“Well, most of us was rather sorry for him.  He’d took a lot of trouble to queer Spider’s pitch and put up a mighty clever fight for Jenny, you see.  But the woman liked her little black beetle best.  In fact she adores him to this day.  Billy married a very fine girl from Princetown.  But I reckon he never felt so properly in love with her as what he did with Mrs. White.”

No.  XIV

THE WOODSTACK

As butler at Oakshotts I was a busy man no doubt, with a mighty good master who knew he’d got a treasure.  Because wine and tobacco be second nature to me, and though very sparing in the use of both, I have great natural gifts and a sort of steadfast and unfailing judgment for the best.  And as master be fond of saying in his amusing way, the best is always good enough for him, so Sir Walter Oakshott of Oakshotts trusted in me, with great credit to himself and applause from his guests.  Never was such an open-handed man, and being a widower at fifty, with no mind just then to try again, he let his sociable instincts run over for his friends, and Oakshotts, as I sometimes said, was more like an hotel than a country house.  For he had his gardening pals come to see his amazing foreign rhododendrons in spring, and his fishermen pals for his lakes and river-banks in summer; while so soon as September came, it was sportsmen and guns and dogs till the end of the shooting season.

So I was a busy man and also a prosperous, because money cleaves to money and Sir Walter’s friends were mostly well-to-do, though few so rich as him; and the gentlemen were experienced and knew a butler when they met one.

But few be too occupied for romance to over-get ’em sooner or later, and at forty I fell in love—­a tiresome thing at that age and not to have been expected from a bachelor-minded man same as me.  And if I’d had the second sight and been able to see where the fatal passion was going to take me, I’d have kept my eyes off Jenny Owlet very careful indeed.