when I asked my sister about it,
she said:

"Plenty of time. No doubt he'll get about his business in a day or two."

But, of course, he hadn't no business to get about, and though he talked
in a vague sort of way concerning his home in Exeter and a brother up to
Salisbury, it was all rubbish as he afterwards admitted. He was a tramp,
and nothing more, and the life at Little Sherberton and the good food and
the warm lying at nights, evidently took his fancy. So he stuck to it, and
such was his natural cleverness and his power of being in the right place
at the right moment that from the first nobody wished him away. He was
always talking of going, and it was always next Monday morning that he
meant to start: but the time went by and Bob Battle didn't. A very cunning
man and must have been in farming some time of his life, for he knew a
lot, and all worth knowing, and I'm not going to deny that he was useful
to me as well as to my sister.

She was as good as a play with Bob, and me and my wife, and another
married party here and there, often died of laughing to hear her talk
about him. Because the way that an unmarried female regards the male is
fearful and wonderful to the knowing mind.

Mary spoke of him as if she'd invented him, and knew his works, like a
clockmaker knows a clock. He interested her something tremendous, and got
to be her only subject presently.

"Mr. Battle was the very man for a farmer like me," she said once, "and
I'm sure I thank God's goodness for sending him along. He's a proper
bailiff about the place, and that clever with the men that nobody quarrels
with him. Of course he does nothing without consulting me; but he's never
mistaken, and apart from the worldly side of Mr. Battle, there's the
religious side."

I hadn't heard about that and didn't expect to, for Mary, though a good
straight woman, as wouldn't have robbed a lamb of its milk, or done a
crooked act for untold money, wasn't religious in the church-going or
Bible-reading sense, same as me and my wife were. In fact she never went
to church, save for a wedding or a funeral; but it appeared that Mr.
Battle set a good bit of store by it, and when she asked him, if he
thought so much of it, why he didn't go, he said it was only his
unfortunate state of poverty and his clothes and boots that kept him away.

"Not that the Lord minds," said Bob, "but the churchgoers do, and a pair
of pants like mine ain't welcomed, except by the Salvati