Finally Ned sat up, and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
"About equal, I should say; except, of course, for money."
"That means we are unequal in all things," remarked Ted shortly. "You can't deny it. A clerk as I am, out for a Whitsun holiday with ten pounds to spend on it in his pocket, isn't--isn't in the same week with--well! what shall I say----"
"A man who employs clerks," suggested Ned with a smile.
Ted gave an impatient shrug. "As you will. However you come by it, you admit having a hundred pounds."
"A hundred and ten I should say," interrupted Ned, who was counting a handful of loose gold and silver. "I've a hundred in notes besides. However! That needn't be a difficulty!"
The level, golden sun-rays flashed on a curved gold flight, as a bright new sovereign flitted duck-and-drake fashion over the brimming pool at their feet, then disappeared, leaving a circled series of ripples like a smoke wreath on its shiny surface.
"Hold hard! I say--you know--here! stop that, will you--don't be such a blamed fool!" ...
There was imminent danger of a struggle in reality when a voice from the road behind them said with a mixture of appeal and authority:
"Do not quarrel, see you, my good fellows, but tell me the cause of your disagreement, and I will advise to the best of my ability."
The speaker, also a young man of some thirty years, was tall and dark with a jaw which should have been strong from its length, but was curiously marred by the almost feminine softness of contour which belied the blue shadow of a hard-shaven beard. For the rest he had a fine pair of fiery dark eyes, set close to the thick eyebrows which almost met on his high, narrow forehead. It was the face of a saint or a sinner, preferably the former; but whichever way, the face of an enthusiast.
"You're a parson," said Ned, ceasing from horseplay and eyeing the rusty black suit. "So we will refer to you, sir, since you are bound by your cloth to agree with _me_, and say that money is the root of all evil."
Apprised of the cause of dispute, the Reverend Morris Pugh, of the Calvinistic Methodist Church in the valley below, sat and looked doubtfully first at the loose gold and silver, then at Ned Cruttenden's critical blue eyes. Both appealed to him strongly; the poetry of his race leapt up to meet the one, the inordinate valuation of even a penny, also typical of his race, reached out to the other.