“’Tis like this, Mr. Haycraft,” he said. “I be very glad to have you for a neighbour, an’ I hope you’ll like Dartymoor, an’ prosper up here, an’ make good money at Vitifer Mine, where I’m told you be going to work; but this I’ll say, don’t let’s be too friendly—nor our women-folk neither. Out of friendship I say it.”
“What a word!” said Mr. Haycraft, who was only twenty-one and of a sanguine nature, “Why, I wants to be friends with everybody, if so be as they’ll let me. An’ my missis too.”
“That’s a very silly idea; but you’m young yet and will larn better come by an’ by. I mean this: you an’ me live a gert deal too close together to get too thick. We’m only human beings, an’ so sure as we get too trustful an’ too fond of listening to each other’s business, so sure us will end by having a mortal row. ’Tis a thing so common as berries in a hedge. I ban’t saying a word against my old woman, mind you. She’s so truthful as light, an’ a Christian to the marrow in her bones. Nor yet be I hinting anything disrespectful of Mrs. Haycraft. Far from it. But human creatures is mostly jerry-built in parts, an’ the best have their weak spots. There’s nought more dangerous on earth than a gert friendship struck up between folks who live close together ’pon opposite sides of the road. I’ve seed the whole story more than once, an’ I know what I say be true.”
Abel Haycraft considered this statement for a moment. Then he spoke:—
“I suppose you’m right. An’ if by bad chance they was to fall out—I mean the women—us would have to take sides as a matter of duty. A husband—well, there ’tis.”
“So us would; but God forbid as our wives should have any quarrel, or you an’ me either; so we’ll just bide friendly with your leave; but not too friendly.”
“’Tis a very good plan, I’m sure,” answered the younger; and that evening he told his wife about it after they had gone to bed.
Mrs. Haycraft felt great interest and enlarged Abel’s vision.
“Do ’e know what that means? It means as his good lady can’t be trusted, an’ the old man well knows it. I lay she’m the sort as makes mischief. Well, don’t you fear. I’ll take care to keep her at arm’s length. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“She’m a kind enough creature so far, I’m sure,” answered Abel. “A motherly fashion of woman, an’ not so old as her husband by twenty years, I should judge.”