"Oh, bother Mr. Floyd!" said Jacob, switching off a thistle's head, for
he knew already that Mr. Floyd was going to teach them Latin, as indeed
he did for three years in his spare time, out of kindness, for there was
no other gentleman in the neighbourhood whom Mrs. Flanders could have
asked to do such a thing, and the elder boys were getting beyond her,
and must be got ready for school, and it was more than most clergymen
would have done, coming round after tea, or having them in his own room
--as he could fit it in--for the parish was a very large one, and Mr.
Floyd, like his father before him, visited cottages miles away on the
moors, and, like old Mr. Floyd, was a great scholar, which made it so
unlikely--she had never dreamt of such a thing. Ought she to have
guessed? But let alone being a scholar he was eight years younger than
she was. She knew his mother--old Mrs. Floyd. She had tea there. And it
was that very evening when she came back from having tea with old Mrs.
Floyd that she found the note in the hall and took it into the kitchen
with her when she went to give Rebecca the fish, thinking it must be
something about the boys.

"Mr. Floyd brought it himself, did he?--I think the cheese must be in
the parcel in the hall--oh, in the hall--" for she was reading. No, it
was not about the boys.

"Yes, enough for fish-cakes to-morrow certainly--Perhaps Captain
Barfoot--" she had come to the word "love." She went into the garden and
read, leaning against the walnut tree to steady herself. Up and down
went her breast. Seabrook came so vividly before her. She shook her head
and was looking through her tears at the little shifting leaves against
the yellow sky when three geese, half-running, half-flying, scuttled
across the lawn with Johnny behind them, brandishing a stick.