“Were you going to the workhouse?” said Captain Carbonel, coming up, and offering an arm to each lady, as was the fashion in those days.
“We thought of it. All the poorest people are there, of course.”
“And the worst,” said the captain. “No, I will not have you go there. It is not fit for you.”
For besides that he was very particular about his ladies, and had no notion of letting them go to all the varieties of evil where they could hope to do good, like the ladies of our days, the workhouse was an utterly different place from the strictly disciplined union houses of the present Poor Law. Each parish had its own, and that of Uphill had no master, no order, but was the refuge of all the disorderly, disreputable people, who could not get houses, or pay their rent, who lived in any kind of fashion, on parish pay and what they could get, and were under no restraint.
While the captain was explaining to them what he had heard from Farmer Goodenough, a sudden noise of shouting and laughing, with volleys of evil words, was heard near the “Fox and Hounds.”
“What is that?” asked Dora, of a tidy young woman coming her way.
“That’s only the chaps at old Sam,” she answered, as if it was an ordinary sound. And on them exclaiming, she explained. “Samson Sanderson, that’s his name, sir. He be what they calls non-compos, and the young fellows at the ‘Fox and Hounds’ they have their fun out of he. They do bait he shameful.”
Violent shouts of foul words and riotous laughter could be distinguished so plainly, that Captain Carbonel hastily thrust his wife and sister into the nearest cottage, and marched into the group of rough men and boys, who stood holloaing rude jokes, and laughing at the furious oaths and abuse in intermittent gasps with which they were received.
“For shame!” his indignant voice broke in. “Are you not ashamed, unmanly fellows, to treat a poor weak lad in this way?”
There was a moment’s silence. Then a great hulking drover called out, “Bless you, sir, he likes it.”