"Well, Hopkins; it's settled now," said Mrs. Dale, "and I'm afraid it can't be unsettled."
"Settled;—well. Tell me this: do you expect, Mrs. Dale, that he's to live there all alone by hisself without any one to say a cross word to,—unless it be me or Dingles; for Jolliffe's worse than nobody, he's so mortial cross hisself. Of course he can't stand it. If you goes away, Mrs. Dale, Mister Bernard, he'll be squire in less than twelve months. He'll come back from the Hingies, then, I suppose?"
"I don't think my brother-in-law will take it in that way, Hopkins."
"Ah, ma'am, you don't know him,—not as I knows him;—all the ins and outs and crinks and crannies of him. I knows him as I does the old apple-trees that I've been a-handling for forty year. There's a deal of bad wood about them old cankered trees, and some folk say they ain't worth the ground they stand on; but I know where the sap runs, and when the fruit-blossom shows itself I know where the fruit will be the sweetest. It don't take much to kill one of them old trees,—but there's life in 'm yet if they be well handled."
"I'm sure I hope my brother's life may be long spared to him," said Mrs. Dale.
"Then don't be taking yourself away, ma'am, into them gashly lodgings at Guestwick. I says they are gashly for the likes of a Dale. It is not for me to speak, ma'am, of course. And I only came up now just to know what things you'd like with you out of the greenhouse."
"Oh, nothing, Hopkins, thank you," said Mrs. Dale.
"He told me to put up for you the best I could pick, and I means to do it;" and Hopkins, as he spoke, indicated by a motion of his head that he was making reference to the squire.
"We shan't have any place for them," said Lily.
"I must send a few, miss, just to cheer you up a bit. I fear you'll be very dolesome there. And the doctor,—he ain't got what you can call a regular garden, but there is a bit of a place behind."