“Well, if ever I doos anything wrong I allus feel glad of it next morning.”
“’Tis against law, Eustace, and to be against law is the downfall of mankind. What I mean to say—I’m a national man.”
“The law! Foo! That’s made by them as don’t care for my needs, and don’t understand my rights. Is it fair to let them control your mind as haven’t got a grip of their own? I worked for yon farmer a matter of fourteen years, hard, I tell you, I let my back sweat....”
The dog at his side was restless; he cuffed it impatiently: “and twice a week my wife she had to go to farmhouse; twice a week; doing up their washing and their muck—‘Lie down!’” he interjected sternly to the querulous dog—“two days in every seven. Then the missus says to my wife, ‘I shall want you to come four days a week in future, Mrs. Cocking; the house is too much of a burden for me.’ My wife says: ‘I can’t come no oftener, ma’am; I’d not have time to look after my own place, my husband, and the six children, ma’am.’ Then missus flew into a passion. ‘Oh, so you won’t come, eh!’
“‘I’d come if I could, ma’am,’ my wife says, ‘and gladly, but it ain’t possible, you see.’
“‘Oh, very well!’ says the missus. And that was the end of that, but come Saturday, when the boss pays me: ‘Cocking,’ he says, ‘I shan’t want you no more arter next week.’ No explanation, mind you, and I never asked for none. I know’d what ’twas for, but I don’t give a dam. What meanness, Mordecai! Of course I don’t give a dam whether I goes or whether I stops; you know my meaning—I’d much rather stop; my home’s where I be known; but I don’t give a dam. ’Tain’t the job I minds so much as to let him have that power to spite me so at a moment after fourteen years because of his wife’s temper. ’Tis not decent. ’Tis under-grading a man.’”
There was no comment from the shepherd. Eustace continued: “If that’s your law, Mordecai, I don’t want it. I ignores it.”
“And that you can’t do,” retorted the old man. “God A’mighty can look after the law.”
“If He be willing to take the disgrace of it, Mordecai Stavely, let Him.”
The men were silent for a long time, until the younger cheerfully asked: “How be poor old Harry Mixen?”