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Steer owned the local weed-sprayer, which, by village custom, was at the service of his neighbours in rotation. This year he fetched the sprayer back from Pethick’s farm just as it was on the point of going on to Bowden’s without reason given. Bowden, who would not have been above using ‘that chap’s’ sprayer so long as it came to him from Pethick in ordinary rotation, was above sending to Steer’s for it. He took the action as a public proclamation of enmity, and in ‘The Three Stars Inn,’ where he went nearly every evening for a glass of cider with a drop of gin and a clove in it, he said out loud that Steer was a ‘colley,’ and Ned wouldn’t be seen dead with that niece of his.

By those words, soon repeated far and wide, he committed his son just when Ned was cooling rapidly towards the girl Pansy, and beginning to think of going to church once more and seeing whether Molly wouldn’t look at him again. After all, it was he, not his father, who would have to go into the witness-box; moreover, he had nothing against Molly Winch.