“We’m Plymouth Brethren from conscience,” she said. “You ban’t gwaine to object, surely—you as have come here to preach charity an’ such like?”
Mr. Budd flushed.
“I’ve come to do my duty, ma’am, and don’t need to be told what that is by my parishioners, I hope. All servants of the vicarage will, as a matter of course, go to church twice every Sunday, and upon week-days also, if I express any wish to that effect.”
“Let ’em, then,” answered the old woman, fiercely. “You can bind ’em in chains of iron, if you will, an’ they’m feeble-hearted enough to let ’e. But us won’t. Us be what we be, an’ Plymouth Brethren have got somethin’ better to do than go hunting foxes, whether or no. I’m a growed woman, an’ Joseph’s my husband, an’ he shan’t be in bondage to no man. To squire’s garden he shall go, an’ save his sawl alive, so now then! Gude evening, sir.”
“If I may have a tell—” began Joseph, in a tremor of emotion; but his wife cut him short.
“You may not,” she cried sternly. “You come home. Least said soonest mended. Awnly I’m sorry to God as a Cæsar of all the Roosias have come to Postbridge instead of a Christian creature.”
So saying, she clutched Joseph and led him away. But on their silent journey homeward Mr. Hannaford pondered this tremendous circumstance deeply. Then, at his cottage gate, he rallied and spoke his mind.
“We’ve done wrong,” he said, “an’ I be gwaine back again to confess to it afore I sleep this night.”
“We’ve done right. You’ll save your sawl an’ take seventeen shilling an’ sixpence. You’ll be a martyr for conscience, an’ I be proud of ’e.”
“Martyr or no martyr, I knaw a silly auld woman, an’ I ban’t proud of ’e at all, nor of myself neither. Anything in reason I’d do for you, an’ have done ever since I took you; but being put to work in cold blood under Smallridge is more’n I will do for you or for all the Plymouth Brothers that ever bleated hell-fire to a decent man. I won’t go under Smallridge. He’d make me sweat enough to float a ship; an’ at my time of life ’twould shorten my days.”