Young Bob and Tom stared at each other, then they remarked, unwillingly, that if he went of course they would go too; upon which old Bob returned that they might please theirsel’s—­he was going.

When Doctor Craddock was told of this decision, he said that now Robert was so much better it might not do him any harm, adding that he thought it showed very good feeling on his part.  Mrs. Wainwright was much elated at the compliment, but Robert himself received it in stony silence.  When the report circulated round the village every one was touched and edified.  Wasn’t it beautiful, people said, and who’d have thought Robert Wainwright had that much feeling!  He had a wonderful good heart, Robert had—­he wasn’t one to say much, but he felt the more.  Mrs. Wainwright went about shaking her head and casting up her eyes.  She had begun by being exasperated at this sudden determination, but finding how very much other folks admired and respected her Robert for it, she had gradually become infected by the general enthusiasm; and, indeed, when she hunted out and carefully brushed her husband’s Sunday clothes, she murmured tearfully to her daughters that “Feyther was a’most too good for this warld,” and that “it ’ud be mich”—­with a sniff—­“if they weren’t gettin’ ready blacks to weer for him next!”

“It mak’s me go all of a shake,” the good woman added.  “Eh, I cannot tell ye!  It seems onnatural-like.  Yer Feyther’s noan like ‘issel’.  To think of his takkin’ on that gate about owd Martin Tyrer; mony a one ‘ud be fain enough as he were out o’ the road!”

Meanwhile Robert himself certainly did not say much, as the neighbours observed; in fact, he said nothing at all.  When his friends came and stared at him after the manner of their kind, and made remarks to each other or to Mrs. Wainwright about how strange it was that he should be that taken to about Martin Tyrer—­though some of them added, sympathetically, that he would be like to miss him, he would, when all was said and done; him and Martin had walked together such a many years—­“rale cronies ye know for all their fallin’s out”—­Robert would stare at them and heave a deep sigh; occasionally he would take his pipe out of his mouth as though about to make a remark, but invariably put it in again without uttering a syllable.  Then his friends would go away, shaking their heads and sighing, after pausing to impart to Mrs. Wainwright their conviction that her Gaffer was failing.

When the day of Martin’s funeral came Robert was, with the assistance of his wife and daughters, attired in his best “blacks”; he himself saw to his foot-gear, having possessed himself of a pair of shears with which he cut a large piece out of the top of one boot.  Mrs. Wainwright had been tearful enough with sentimental foreboding all the morning, and, when she saw the irreparable damage wrought by Feyther’s ruthless hands, she began to cry in good earnest.