“I don’t know. They said I was to let you know, and I’ve _let_ you know.”
But it was evident he had acted under compulsion, and he added, as one man to another—
“You go and have it out with ’em. Butter ’em up a bit and they’ll come round.”
“I’m hanged if I will! I’ll manage somehow if I have to make the cakes myself!”
But, oddly enough, his respect for Andy was increased by this unreasonable behaviour, and he stood by the door, scratching his head, and slowly evolving a means of compromise. Then he closed the door again, advanced a few steps, and remarked with the air of a conspirator, “I’ve got it!”
His manner was so queerly at variance with his appearance, that any one not concerned in the serious question must have been tickled by the incongruity; but Andy peered at him anxiously—
“_I’ll_ fix the date. Can’t let you have my waggons to take the children until the 12th. You’d said the 5th. And if the date’s altered to suit me, Mrs. Thorpe must oblige you. And Mrs. Will and Mrs. Tom Werrit’ll follow her.”
It was Mr. Thorpe’s first effort at diplomacy, and he was fifty-one. No wonder he glowed with the late joy of the creator and forgot everything but the splendour of his own idea.
“My word. That’s a splendid plan. Awfully good of you,” said Andy with eager sincerity.
“But not a word to Mrs. Thorpe. Not a word,” chuckled Mr. Thorpe, going towards the door.
Mr. Thorpe paused with his hand on the door before opening it again.
“Look here,” he said. “You can’t know as much about women as I do. You come to _me_ if you get stuck.”
He really felt, now he had started on a diplomatist’s career, that he should like to go on. He felt all the stirring pleasure of using talents hitherto unsuspected.
“I will,” said Andy gratefully, though he did think it rather ridiculous that fat Mr. Thorpe should consider he knew more about women than a young man who had been a curate in London.
“There’s a pack of women in Gaythorpe,” said Mr. Thorpe, opening the door. “Good-bye.”
But that was not what he meant to say, nor what Andy understood. He intended to convey to his Vicar the strange comradeship which binds all men together against all women. And the hand-shake they exchanged was a final expression of this bond.