I've got another wife and much
better children a long way from here. My other wife's got redder
hair than yours, and my other garden's got a much finer situation;
and I'm going off to them."
With these words, apparently, he sent the rake flying far up into the sky,
higher than many could have shot an arrow, and caught it again.
Then he cleared the hedge at a leap and alighted on his feet down
in the lane below, and set off up the road without even a hat.
Much of the picture was doubtless supplied by Inglewood's accidental
memory of the place. He could see with his mind's eye that big
bare-headed figure with the ragged rake swaggering up the crooked
woodland road, and leaving lamp-post and pillar-box behind.
But the gardener, on his own account, was quite prepared to swear
to the public confession of bigamy, to the temporary disappearance
of the rake in the sky, and the final disappearance of the man up
the road. Moreover, being a local man, he could swear that, beyond some
local rumours that Smith had embarked on the south-eastern coast,
nothing was known of him again.
This impression was somewhat curiously clinched by Michael Moon in the few
but clear phrases in which he opened the defence upon the third charge.
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