"It goes as tinder and a spark o' fire, that does," said the farmer. "Girls like Ruby don't want no time to be wooed by one such as that, though they'll fall-lall with a man like John Crumb for years."
"I suppose she's gone to London."
"Don't know nothing of where she's gone, squoire;—only she have gone some'eres. May be it's Lowestoffe. There's lots of quality at Lowestoffe a' washing theyselves in the sea."
Then they returned to the priest, who might be supposed to be cognisant of the guiles of the world and competent to give advice on such an occasion as this. "If she was one of our people," said Father Barham, "we should have her back quick enough."
"Would ye now?" said Ruggles, wishing at the moment that he and all his family had been brought up as Roman Catholics.
"I don't see how you would have more chance of catching her than we have," said Carbury.
"She'd catch herself. Wherever she might be she'd go to the priest, and he wouldn't leave her till he'd seen her put on the way back to her friends."
"With a flea in her lug," suggested the farmer.
"Your people never go to a clergyman in their distress. It's the last thing they'd think of. Any one might more probably be regarded as a friend than the parson. But with us the poor know where to look for sympathy."
"She ain't that poor, neither," said the grandfather.