“What’s the beam like?” the Squire called up to someone aloft.
“Sound as a bell,” answered a voice.
“I said so. We’ll have en hoisted by Sunday, I’ll send a waggon over to Wheel Gooniver for a tackle and winch. Damme, up there! Don’t keep sheddin’ such a muck o’ dust on your betters!”
“I can’t help no other, Squire!” said the voice overhead; “such a cauch o’ pilm an’ twigs, an’ birds’ droppins’! If I sneeze I’m a lost man.”
Taffy, staring up as well as he could for the falling rubbish, could just spy a white smock above the beam, and a glint of daylight on the toe-scutes of two dangling boots.
“I’ll dam soon make you help it. Is the beam sound?”
“Ha’n’t I told ’ee so?” said the voice querulously.
“Then come down off the ladder, you son of a—”
“Gently, Squire!” put in Mr. Raymond.
The Squire groaned. “There I go again—an’ in the House of God itself! Oh! ’tis a case with me! I’ve a heart o’ stone—a heart o’ stone.” He turned and brushed his rusty hat with his coat-cuff. Suddenly he faced round again. “Here, Bill Udy,” he said to the old labourer who had just come down the ladder, “catch hold of my hat an’ carry en fore to porch. I keep forgettin’ I’m in church, an’ then on he goes.”