A bit of blood may do very well
for young gentlemen, but to go and put a gentleman of Mr. Barradine's
years--"
"Mind you," interposed a Roebuck stableman, "Mr. Barradine liked 'em
gay. Mr. Barradine was a horseman!"
Mr. Barradine _liked_ gay horses. Mr. Barradine _was_ a horseman.
That tremendous sound of the past tense answered the question that
Mavis was breathlessly waiting to ask.
"Shocking bad business, isn't it, Mrs. Dale?"
She did not reply; but nobody noticed her silence or agitation. They
all went on talking; and she only thought: "He is dead. He is dead. He
is dead." She was temporarily tongue-tied, awestricken, full of a
strange superstitious horror.
Presently Allen spoke to her again. "There'll never be such another
kind gentleman in _our_ times, Mrs. Dale; nor one so open-handed. And
it's not only the gentry that's going to mourn him. The pore hev lost
a good friend."
"Yes," she whispered. "Indeed they have. Indeed they have."
Miss Waddy came out of her absurd little post-card shop and kept
saying, "Oh, dear!" She, like almost everybody else in the village
except Mavis Dale and Mary, had known the news for hours; but she was
greedy for the more and more particularized information that every
newcomer brought with him along the road from Manninglea.
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