"Oh, I have done already. In fact I may say that one of my principles, Mr. Hazlewood, is to contradict everything. As I said to them, when they was talking about it in the post-office the other night, and that post-office is a rare place for gossip! Perhaps you've noticed that the nosiest man in a town always gets made postmaster? Where had I got to?—ah, yes, I said to them, 'You know a great lot about other people's business,' I said, 'but when I tell you that old Mrs. Mathers who lives in the last cottage but one in Rectory Lane says she's taken particular note as Mr. Hazlewood has never been near the Rectory for the last fortnight unless it was once when she heard footsteps and hadn't time to get to the window to see who it was on account of the kettle being on the boil at that moment, where's your Holy Matrimony?' I said. With that up speaks Miss Burge from the back of the shop whose father used to keep the King's Head before he dropped dead of the apoplexy on Shipcot platform. 'That doesn't say he hasn't gone round by the field the same as Mr. Burrows's servant used to when she was being courted by We'll-mention-no-names.' 'No, and that he hasn't either,' said I smacking the counter, for I was feeling a bit angry by now at all this poking about in other people's business, 'that he hasn't,' I said, 'because the Rectory cook asked me most particular if there was anything the matter down at Plashers Mead seeing as Mr. Hazlewood hadn't been near the Rectory for a fortnight. That doesn't look like Holy Matrimony,' I said, and with that I walked out of the post-office. Mr. Hazlewood," Godbold concluded very earnestly, "the gossip of Wychford is something as no one would believe, if they hadn't heard it, as I have, every mortal day of my life."
Guy could have laughed on his own account, but the notion of Pauline's being dragged into the chatter made him furious. Yet what could he do? If he went frequently to the Greys' house, he must be engaged according to Wychford. And if he did not go....
"I suppose they'll be saying next that the engagement has been broken off," he enquired with cold sarcasm.
"Oh, they have said it. Depend upon it, Mr. Hazlewood, it undoubtedly has been said."
It began to appeal to Guy as extremely undignified—the way in which he had let Godbold chatter on like this.
"I'm afraid I must be getting back to my work," he said curtly.
"That's right. Work's the best answer to talk. Did you feel it much here in that rainy spell?"
"The meadows were a bit splashy of course, but the water never got anywhere near the house."
"But it will. Don't you make any mistake. It will. Only of course we've had a dry autumn. Why, last June year Miss Peasey could have been fishing for minnows in her kitchen. Now that seems a nice upstanding sort of woman. A Wesleen, they tell me? I haven't seen her in church that I can remember, and which would account for it. But I never talk to the chapel folk, they being that uncivilized. She's rather deaf, isn't she?"
"Yes, and therefore cannot gossip," Guy snapped.