“Why, your gardiner do say,” replied Peter, reluctantly, “as how she goes arter the pheasants in Copse-hole.”
“The deuce!” cried the Squire; “that will never do: she must be shot, Peter, she must be shot. My pheasants! my best preserves! and poor Goody Truman’s cream, too! a perfect devil. Look to it, Peter; if I hear any complaints again, Jacobina is done for—What are you laughing at, Nell?”
“Well, go thy ways, Peter, for a shrewd man and a clever man; it is not every one who could so suddenly have elicited my father’s compassion for Goody Truman’s cream.”
“Pooh!” said the Squire, “a pheasant’s a serious thing, child; but you women don’t understand matters.”
They had now crossed through the village into the fields, and were slowly sauntering by
“Hedge-row elms on hillocks green,”
when, seated under a stunted pollard, they came suddenly on the ill-favoured person of Dame Darkmans: she sat bent (with her elbows on her knees, and her hands supporting her chin,) looking up to the clear autumnal sky; and as they approached, she did not stir, or testify by sign or glance that she even perceived them.
There is a certain kind-hearted sociality of temper that you see sometimes among country gentlemen, especially not of the highest rank, who knowing, and looked up to by, every one immediately around them, acquire the habit of accosting all they meet—a habit as painful for them to break, as it was painful for poor Rousseau to be asked ‘how he did’ by an applewoman. And the kind old Squire could not pass even Goody Darkmans, (coming thus abruptly upon her,) without a salutation.
“All alone, Dame, enjoying the fine weather—that’s right—And how fares it with you?”
The old woman turned round her dark and bleared eyes, but without moving limb or posture. “‘Tis well-nigh winter now: ‘tis not easy for poor folks to fare well at this time o’ year. Where be we to get the firewood, and the clothing, and the dry bread, carse it! and the drop o’ stuff that’s to keep out the cold. Ah, it’s fine for you to ask how we does, and the days shortening, and the air sharpening.”