“Doan’t care what he thought. Weern’t plain dealin’ to bide quiet about that, an’ I shall tell un so.”
“Well, doan’t ’e quarrel with Clem. He’m ’bout the awnly friend you’ve got left now.”
“I’ve got mother an’ you. I’m all right. I can see as straight as any man, an’ all my brain-work in the past ban’t gwaine to be wasted ’cause wan auld miller fellow happens to put a mean trick on me. I’m above caring. I just goes along and remembers that people has their failings.”
“We must make allowance for other folk.”
“So us must; an’ I be allus doin’ it; so why the hell doan’t they make allowance for me? That’s why I boil awver now an’ again—damn it! I gets nought but kicks for my halfpence—allus have; an’ I won’t stand it from mortal man much longer!”
Chris kept her face, for Will’s views on conduct and man’s whole duty to man were no new thing.
“Us must keep patient, Will, ’specially with the auld.”
“I be patient. It ’mazes me, looking back, to see what I have suffered in my time. But a man’s a man, not a post or a holy angel. Us wouldn’t hear such a deal about angels’ tempers either if they’d got to faace all us have.”
“That’s profanity an’ wickedness.”
“’Tis truth. Any fule can be a saint inside heaven; an’ them that was born theer and have flown ’bout theer all theer time, like birds in a wood, did ought to be even-tempered. What’s to cross’em?”