ought of the purchaser, and the mystery grew, because Mrs.
Cobley heard nought either; and then there come a nice open sort of
morning with just a promise of another spring in the air, and when Milly
looked out of her chicket window, who should she see in their ruinous
cabbage patch but Jack with his tools going leisurely to work to clean the
dirty ground.

She told her aunt, and they talked a bit and come to a conclusion afore
they asked him in to have a bite of breakfast.

"'Tis clear he's jobbing for the owner," said Jane Pedlar. "No doubt he'll
very soon put a different face on the ground, such an orderly man as him,
and such a lover of the soil; but I'm sorry in a way."

"Why for?" asked her niece. "A nicer man than Mr. Cobley don't walk."

"A very nice man indeed if it wasn't for his face," admitted the old
woman, "and I've got to like even his face, because of his gentle and
doggy eyes; but I'm sorry, because this shows only too clear the general
opinion touching Mr. Cobley is the right one."

"And what's the general opinion?" inquired Milly.

"That he's come home so poor as he went off," answered Jane Pedlar.
"Because if he'd saved a little money he wouldn't be doing rough work for
another man."

Milly saw the force of that and said no more at the time.

And then Cobley spoke to his mother one night and owned to a gathering
dejection.

"I like to see a job through," he said, "and I'm casting around pretty far
and wide for a man that might be good enough for that girl. She's a
beautiful and simple character, in my opinion, and her heart's as fine as
her face; but it won't do for her to get a fellow who is reckless and too
fond of himself. She must have the right one, who puts her first, and
though there's a few decent chaps in the running, now they know Dicky
Bewes is down and out, yet I wouldn't say there's just the chap anybody
would choose for her."

Well, Mrs. Cobley looked at him with a good bit of astonishment, for such
modesty she couldn't believe ever dwelt in a male. She knew, under promise
of secrecy, that Jack was a tolerable rich man; but he'd bade her not
breathe the fact.

And Mary Cobley knew something else also, which she couldn't very well
tell her son till now, so she'd kept her secret; but when she heard as he
was busy finding somebody as might be good enough for Milly Boon, the
woman in her broke loose and she said a thing she'd never said afore.

"Of all zanies, you be the bigge