Jinny did not imitate them, and silence fell again, tempered by Methusalem’s snappings. Really, it was very awkward, Elijah felt, thus proposing to a girl behind her back. But he struggled gallantly. “Take stomach staggers now—if those horses you saw waiting to be killed this evening had been treated in time——!” “The horses in your field?” cried Jinny, shocked. “But they looked so lively.” “They’re all like that,” he explained. “Once out of harness they get a bit jaunty again, but they’re worth more dead than alive.” “It’s dreadful killing off a horse that has served one!” Jinny burst out. “Just for a few shillings!” “A few shillings? Why there’s horses over two-fifty pounds! Flesh, I mean,” he explained, with a chuckle. “Not to mention the skin, hair and bones. Why, there’s eighty pounds of intestines for sausage-skins!” “Oh, do hold your tongue!” cried Jinny, feeling sick again. “Yes, and what about _his_ tongue!” retorted Elijah triumphantly. “It ain’t only Frenchies that get that. And his tail waving for funerals! And his hoofs in your own shoe-buttons!” Jinny felt indeed as though hoofs had descended on her feet, and she could almost have sacrificed Methusalem’s high-waving tail to adorn her passenger’s obsequies. “My neighbour, the chemist—he buys the blood!” continued the ghoulish Elijah. “He makes it into——” But just here at a cross-road Jinny’s horn signalled to a smart young man in a velvet waistcoat, who was driving a trap, and brought him to a standstill. Would Barnaby deliver a keg of oil at Uckford Manor if he was passing that way? That Manor was, it transpired, the one goal and purpose of Barnaby’s journey. Jinny—well aware young Purley was homeward bound for Foxearth Farm—gave him a radiant smile, and Elijah threw him the keg and a furious look, a reliable fellow-feeling informing him that the velvety liar was going at least two miles out of his way. Downright dishonest he felt it, seeing that neither the young man’s time nor his trap was his own, but belonged to his father, the hurdle-maker. But what could you expect of Blanche’s brother? Let Jinny beware of the family fickleness, let her lean on a less showy but manlier breast. “I wonder you don’t arrange your things village by village instead of letting ’em lay all over the vehicle,” he observed as she drove on. “I shan’t forget where to drop you,” came the answer over her cold shoulder.