“No,” said Rhoda. “Their faces are my business; I'll soon fix them. She didn't say putty-faced; she said pasty.”
“Grateful to you for the distinction, Miss Gale,” said Zoe.
Miss Gale proceeded to insist that boys are not pasty-faced without a cause, and it is to be sought lower down. “Ah!” cried she, suddenly, “is that a cherry that I see before me? No, a million. They steal them and eat them by the thousand, and that's why. Tell the truth, now, everybody—they eat the stones.”
Miss Vizard said she did not know, but thought them capable.
“Children know nothing,” said Vizard. “Please address all future scientific inquiries to an 'old inhabitant.' Miss Gale, the country abounds in curiosities; but, among those curiosities, even Science, with her searching eye, has never yet discovered an unswallowed cherry stone in Hillstoke village.”
“What! not on the trees?”
“She is too much for me. Drive on, coachman, and drown her replies in the clatter of hoofs. Round by the Stag, Zoe. I am uneasy till I have locked Fair Science up. I own it is a mean way of getting rid of a troublesome disputant.”
“Now I think it is quite fair,” said Fanny. “She shuts you up, and so you lock her up.”
“'Tis well,” said Vizard, dolefully. “Now I am No. 3—I who used to retort and keep girls in their places—with difficulty. Here is Ned Severne, too, reduced to silence. Why, where's your tongue? Miss Gale, you would hardly believe it, this is our chatterbox. We have been days and days, and could not get in a word edgewise for him. But now all he can do is to gaze on you with canine devotion, and devour the honey—I beg pardon, the lime-juice—of your lips. I warn you of one thing, though; there is such a thing as a threatening silence. He is evidently booking every word you utter; and he will deliver it all for his own behind your back some fine day.”
With this sort of banter and small talk, not worth deluging the reader dead with, they passed away the time till they reached the farm.