"No, it's the idle rich I be talkin' of, like Mr. Everard or Captain Gordon, or even Parson; for what does he do, I should like to know, beyond preach, and that's an easy enough job. What right have Captain Gordon or Mr. Everard to the hares and pheasants? They be wild things, and I says let anybody take 'em as can catch 'em. The folks in Scripture went out huntin', and we're not told as it was called poachin'. They didn't bring Esau up before the magistrates for gettin' his venison."
Mrs. Gartley shook her head. Such reasoning was utterly beyond her powers of argument.
"I reckon times was different then," she ventured. "They be cruel bad for us poor folks just now."
"We'd be as good as anybody else if we had the money," urged her husband. "You're a fine-lookin' wench still, Jane, if you'd a silk dress and a big hat with feathers like Mrs. Gordon's."
"What's the use o' talkin'?" replied Mrs. Gartley, amazed at the unwonted compliment. "I'm never likely to wear a silk dress this side o' the grave."
"Unlikelier things has come to happen than that! We might be somebodies if——"
"If what?"
"If something I've got in my mind was to come off."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, nothing particular! Only it would be uncommon nice to set up as fine as other folks—in a new country, where no one knowed what we had been."