The brothers were both at home. She came to the point at once, realizing that with Gloucestershire countrymen nothing would be gained either by beating about the bush or attempting to approach the subject tactfully.

‘Mr Wootton and Mr Harry Wootton?’ she said.

‘Ah, right first time, missus,’ said Abel, the elder brother. ‘What can us do for ’ee?’

‘You can tell me the truth,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a fiendish grin. ‘How did you come to get yourselves mentioned in an anonymous letter to Miss Hughes?’

‘Anonymous? That means somebody didn’t put their name to it, eh?’

‘Exactly.’

‘That means no good were said of us, eh?’

‘No good at all. Far from it. It accused Miss Hughes of allowing you to consort immorally with her students.’

The brothers looked at one another. Abel, the widower, opened a large, brown-toothed mouth in hearty Rabelaisian laughter. Harry, the woman-hater, muttered a dark, Welsh oath and spat into the open grate.

‘Well, I never did!’ crowed Abel. ‘If that there ent a good un as ever I yeard! Come on, speak up, Arry! None of that there talk you picked up off old Tommy Evans! Speak English, man, and speak up!’

‘Well,’ said Harry, slowly, eyeing Mrs Bradley with suspicion and some resentment, ‘being as it appears to have come out, here’er be, then!’ He paused, and looked at his brother.

‘Get on, lad,’ said Abel, encouragingly. ‘Get the load off’n thy conscience!’ He roared again. Harry appeared to make up his mind.

‘I don’t want to get nobody in trouble,’ he said, in his soft, thick burr, ‘but young immen be a bit too lively nowadays. I was smoothing over the potato patch way back be’ind the College when one of the young immen her comes up to me and her says, “Us be keeping Hallowse’en,” her says, “and it’d be a bit o’ fun,” her says, “if you and Abel was to come along to it. We’ll have turmut lanterns and put sheets on us, and have bobbing for apples and … well, you know the sort of thing,” her says. “Do come. The more the merrier!”