'That's a pity, too: for Landeweddy Farm's her own freehold, an' I've heard her say more'n once how sorry she feels for you, livin' alone as you do. I don't everyways like Missus Tresize, but she's a bowerly woman an' nimble for her age—which can't be forty, not by a year or two. Old Tresize married her for her looks. I mind goin' to the weddin', an' she brought en no more'n her clothes an' herself inside of 'em: an' now she've a-buried th' old doter, an' sits up at Landeweddy in her own parlour a-playin' the pianner with both hands. What d'ee reckon a woman does that for?'
'Maybe because she is fond of music,' said Doctor Unonius dryly.
The invalid chuckled, until her old head in its white mob-cap nodded against the white pillow propping it.
'I married three men mysel' in my time, as you d' know; an' if either wan had been rich enough to leave me a pianner, I'd ha' married three more. . . . What tickles me is you men with your talk o' spoort. Catchin' fish for a business I can understand: you got to do that for money, which is the first thing in life; an' when you're married, the woman sees that you don't shirk it. But you make me laugh, puttin' on airs an' pretendin' to do it for spoort—"Wimmen ha'n't got no sense o' spoort," says you, all solemn as owls. Soon as a boy turns fourteen he takes up the trick. "Wimmen ha'n't got no sense o' spoort," says he, sticking his hands in his breeches pockets; an' off he goes to hook fish, an' comes swaggerin' back to be taken, catch an' all, by a young 'ooman that has been sayin' naught but markin' him down all the time. Spoort? This world, doctor, is made up of hooks an' eyes: an' you reckon—do 'ee—the best spoort goes to the hooks? Ask the eyes and the maidens that make 'em.'
The doctor, who had risen and picked up his hat when Mrs Puckey linked his name with the widow Tresize's, came back and re-seated himself by the bedside. The old woman enjoyed her chat—it did her more good than medicine, she said—and so long as she steered it clear of himself and his private affairs he was willing enough to indulge her. Nay, he too—being no prude—enjoyed her general disquisitions on matrimony and the sexes. Homo sum, etc., . . . He was a great reader of Montaigne, and like Montaigne he loved listening to folks, however humble, who (as he put it) knew their subject. Mrs Puckey certainly knew her subject, and if in experience she fell a little short of Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath,' she handled it with something of that lady's freedom, and, in detail, with a plainness of speech worthy of Panurge.
She knew very well that by further reference to Mrs Tresize she risked cutting short the doctor's visit. Yet, woman-like, she could not forbear from just one more word.
'She keeps it under the bed.'
'Keeps what?' asked Doctor Unonius.
The old woman chuckled again. 'Why, her money, to be sure—hundreds an' hundreds o' pounds—in a great iron chest. I wonder she can sleep o' nights with it, up in that g'e'rt lonely house, an' not a man within call—Aw, doctor, dear, don't tell me you're goin'!'
[1] Quaere. Was this some faint inherited memory of 'the old profession'?—In nomine domini, etc.