“And when you get there you will tell me how you like it, won't you?”
“Yes, ma'am,” continued Colin; “mother has taught me always to say what I think. I shall be sure to tell you exactly.”
“What a good mother!” exclaimed Miss Sowersoft.
“I like her better than anybody else in the world,” added Colin.
“What, better than me?” ironically demanded Miss Sowersoft.
“I don't like you at all, I tell you!” he replied, at the same time breaking from her hands; “for I don't know you; and, besides, you are not half so pretty as my mother, nor Fanny either.”
Miss Sowersoft blushed, and looked confused at this bit of truth—for a truth it was, which others would certainly have thought, but not have given utterance to.
“I will teach you your manners, young Impudence, when I get hold of you, or else there are no hazel-twigs in Snitterton plantation!” thought Miss Sowersoft, reversing Colin's system, and keeping that truth all to herself which she ought to have spoken.
“You will take care he is well fed?” remarked Mistress Clink, somewhat in a tone of interrogation, and as though anxious to divert her visitor's thoughts to some other topic.
“As to feeding,” replied Miss Maria, once more verging towards her favourite topic, “I can assure you, ma'am, that the most delicious dinner is set out every day on my table; with a fine, large, rich Yorkshire pudding, the size of one of those floor-stones, good enough, I am sure, for a duke to sit down to. If you were to see the quantities of things that I put into my oven for the men's dinner, you would be astonished. Great bowls full of stewed meat, puddings, pies, and, I am sure, roasted potatoes past counting. Look at Mr. Palethorpe. You saw him. He does no discredit to the farm, I think. And really he is such a clever, good, honest man! He is worth a Jew's eye on that farm, for I never in my life could get any man like him. Then, see what an excellent master he will be for this boy. In five or six years he would be fit to take the best situation that ever could be got for him, and do Sammy a deal of credit, too, for his teaching. And as to his being taken ill, or anything of that kind, we never think of such a thing with us. People often complain of having no appetite, but it requires all that we can do to keep their appetites down. A beautiful bracing air we have off the moor, worth every doctor in Yorkshire; and I really believe it cures more people that are ill than all of them put together.”