“My conscience is very well, an’ always have been since I was a bwoy.”
“You’m a deal tu easy, however,” she answered sternly—“a deal tu easy, an’ you’ll very likely find that out when ’tis tu late. Your conscience be like proud-flesh, I reckon: don’t hurt ’e ’cause ’tis past feeling. I wish it pricked you so often as your rheumatics do. ’Twould be a sign of grace.”
“You’m like poor Parson Truman’s li’l maiden wi’ her flowers, you be,” he retorted. “Her was always dragging up the things to see how they prospered, an’ you’m always dragging up your conscience by the roots, same way, to see how ’tis faring. I let mine bide.”
“You can’t,” snapped back Mrs. Hannaford. “Conscience ban’t built to bide—no more’n a growing pear upon a tree. It goes from gude to better, or else from bad to worse. You ban’t so righteous-minded as I could wish ’e, Joseph; but I’ve done a deal for you since we’ve been man an’ wife; an’ if you’m spared ten year more, I lay I’ll have your conscience to work so hard as a man saving his own hay.”
“Pity you can’t live an’ let live, my dear,” answered the gardener. “Even the weeds was made by God for His own ends, as I always told Truman. You’m a very religious woman; an’ nobody knaws it better’n you; all the same, if folks’ consciences ax for such a power of watching, ’tis enough for every human to look after theer own, surely.”
“Why for don’t you do it, then?”
“Here’s the vicarage,” he answered. “Us better not go in warm—might be against us. I’ll dust my boots, an’ you’d best to cool your face, for ’tis glistening like the moon in the sky.”
Presently they stood before a busy newcomer. He proved a young, plump, and pleasant man—a man fond of fishing and fox-hunting, a man of rotund voice and rotund figure. Joseph’s heart grew hopeful. Here was no dragon of horticulture, but one, like himself, who would live and let live, and doubtless leave the garden in the hands of its professional attendant.
“Your servant, sir,” he said. “I hope your honour be very well an’ likes the church an’ the hunt—also the garden.”
“Mr. Joseph Hannaford, I suppose, and this is Mrs. Hannaford—good parishioners both, of course? Sit down, Mrs. Hannaford, please.”