His sympathy met me more than half-way. The villagers as a body were
unbounded in their approval of the Colonel, and Mrs. Irvine was even
greedier than old Isaac for every particular I could impart respecting
him.
"He's a _handsome_ gentleman," said the bee-master's wife, "and he
passed us (my neighbour, Mrs. Mettam, and me) as near, sir, as I am to
you, with a gold-headed stick in his hand, and them lads following after
him, for all the world like the Good Shepherd and his flock."
I managed not to laugh, and old Isaac added, "There's a many in this
village, sir, would have been glad to have taken the liberty of
expressing themselves to the Colonel, and a _depitation_ did get as far
as your father's gates one night, but they turned bashful and come home
again. And I know, for one, Master Jack, that if me and my missus had
had a room fit to offer one of them poor young gentlemen, I'd have given
a week's wage to do it, and the old woman would have been happy to her
dying day."
CHAPTER XII.
"GOD help me! save I take my part
Of danger on the roaring sea,
A devil rises in my heart,
Far worse than any death to me.
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