Farmer Goodenough was upon them; and the words he showered on them were not by any means “good enough” to be repeated here. He stormed at them for their idleness so furiously as to set off the babies in the hedge screaming and yelling. Tirzah Todd, the gipsy-looking woman whom he especially abused, tossed her head and marched off in the midst, growling fiercely, to quiet her child; and he, sending a parting imprecation after her, directed his violence upon poor Bessy Mole, though all this time she had been creeping on, shaking, trembling, and crying, under the pelting of the storm; but, unluckily, in her nervousness and blindness from tears, she pulled up a young turnip, and the farmer fell on her and rated her hotly for not being worth half her wage, and doing him more harm than good with her carelessness. She had not a word to say for herself, and went on shivering and trying to check her sobs while he shouted out that he only employed her from charity, and she had better look out, or he should turn her off at once.
“Oh, sir, don’t!” then came out with a burst of tears. “My poor children—”
“Don’t go whining about your children, but let me see you do your work.”
However, this last sentence was in a milder tone, as if the fit of passion had exhausted itself; and Mr Goodenough found his way back to the path that crossed the fields, and went on. Tirzah Todd set her teeth, clenched her fist and shook it after him, while the other women, as soon as he was out of sight, began to console Bessy Mole, who was crying bitterly and saying, “what would become of her poor children, and her own poor father.”
“Never you mind, Bessy,” said Molly Hewlett, “every one knows as how old Goodenough’s bark is worse than his bite.”
“He runs out and it’s over,” put in Betsy Seddon.
“I’m sure I can hardly keep about any way,” sobbed the widow. “My inside is all of a quake. I can’t abide words.”
“Ten to one he don’t give you another sixpence a week, after all,” added Nanny Barton.
“He ain’t no call to run out at one,” said Tirzah, standing upright and flourishing her baby.
“I’d like to give him as good as he gave, an old foul-mouthed brute!”