“You’ll find him a wery hearty sort of man,” said the filer, “if he don’t hap to be in drink. He’s a little robustious then, but take him all in all for a master, you may go further and fare worse.
“What! this monster!”
“Lord bless you, it’s his way, that’s all, we be a queer set here; but he has his pints. Give him a lock to make, and you won’t have your box picked; he’s wery lib’ral too in the wittals. Never had horse-flesh the whole time I was with him; they has nothin’ else at Tugsford’s; never had no sick cow except when meat was very dear. He always put his face agin still-born calves; he used to say he liked his boys to have meat what was born alive and killed alive. By which token there never was any sheep what had bust in the head sold in our court. And then sometimes he would give us a treat of fish, when it had been four or five days in town and not sold. No, give the devil his due, say I. There never was no want for anything at meals with the Bishop, except time to eat them in.”
“And why do you call him the Bishop?”
“That’s his name and authority; for he’s the governor here over all of us. And it has always been so that Wodgate has been governed by a bishop; because as we have no church, we will have as good. And by this token that this day sen’night, the day my time was up, he married me to this here young lady. She is of the Baptist school religion, and wanted us to be tied by her clergyman, but all the lads that served their time with me were married by the Bishop, and many a more, and I saw no call to do no otherwise. So he sprinkled some salt over a gridiron, read ‘Our Father’ backwards, and wrote our name in a book: and we were spliced; but I didn’t do it rashly, did I, Suky, by the token that we had kept company for two years, and there isn’t a gal in all Wodgate what handles a file, like Sue.”
“And what is your name, my good fellow?”
“They call me Tummas, but I ayn’t got no second name; but now I am married I mean to take my wife’s, for she has been baptised, and so has got two.”
“Yes sir,” said the girl with the vacant face and the back like a grasshopper; “I be a reg’lar born Christian and my mother afore me, and that’s what few gals in the Yard can say. Thomas will take to it himself when work is slack; and he believes now in our Lord and Saviour Pontius Pilate who was crucified to save our sins; and in Moses, Goliath, and the rest of the Apostles.”
“Ah! me,” thought Morley, “and could not they spare one Missionary from Tahiti for their fellow countrymen at Wodgate!”