say." Daddy Darwin was smoking over his garden wall, and Mrs. Shaw, from
the neighboring farm, had paused in her walk for a chat. She was a
notable housewife, and there was just a touch of envy in her sense of
the improved appearance of the doorsteps and other visible points of the
Dovecot. Daddy Darwin took his pipe out of his mouth to make way for the
force of his reply:

"_Vagrant!_ Nay, missus, yon's no vagrant. _He's fettling up all
along._ Jack's the sort if he finds a key he'll look for the lock; if
ye give him a knife-blade he'll fashion a heft. Why, a vagrant's a chap
that, if he'd all your maester owns to-morrow, he'd be on the tramp
again afore t' year were out, and three years wouldn't repair the
mischief he'd leave behind him. A vagrant's a chap that if ye lend him a
thing he loses it; if ye give him a thing he abuses it----"

"That's true enough, and there's plenty servant-girls the same," put in
Mrs. Shaw.

"Maybe there be, ma'am--maybe there be; vagrants' children, I reckon.
But yon little chap I got from t' House comes of folk that's had stuff
o' their own, and cared for it--choose who they were."

"Well, Daddy," said his neighbor, not without malice, "I'll wish you a
good evening. You've got a good bargain out of the parish, it seems."

But Daddy Darwin only chuckled, and stirred up the ashes in the bowl of
his pipe.

"The same to you, ma'am--the same to you. Aye! he's a good bargain--a
very good bargain is Jack March."