"Ees, none better. But I don't want he to get hold of it; he's made away with enough already;" and she began to think.
"Curiously impassive people, we Wessex worthies, when we are a little ground down with trouble. You must give her time, and she will do our work. She wants the money, but she is long past being excited at the prospect of it."
"What's that you're whispering?" asked she sharply.
Campbell stamped with impatience.
"You don't trust us yet, eh?—then, there!" and he took five sovereigns from his pocket, and tossed them on the table. "There's your money! I trust you to do the work, as you've been paid beforehand."
She caught up the gold, rang every piece on the table to see if it was sound; and then—
"Sally, you go down with these gentlemen to the Jonson's Head, and if he ben't there, go to the Fighting Cocks; and if he ben't there, go to the Duke of Wellington; and tell he there's two gentlemen has heard of his poetry, and wants to hear 'un excite. And then you give he a glass of liquor, and praise up his nonsense, and he'll tell you all he knows, and a sight more. Gi' un plenty to drink. It'll be a saving and a charity, for if he don't get it out of you, he will out of me."
And she returned doggedly to her washing.
"Can't I do anything for you?" asked Tom, whose heart always yearned over a Berkshire soul. "I have plenty of friends down at Whitbury still."
"More than I have. No, sir," said she sadly, and with the first touch of sweetness they had yet heard in her voice. "I've cured my own bacon, and I must eat it. There's none down there minds me, but them that would be ashamed of me. And I couldn't go without he, and they wouldn't take he in; so I must just bide." And she went on washing.