"He wouldn't have gone so far single-handed."
"Don't say that. I only pushed him along the road he was taking. The employer be always reluctant to see things are worth what they'll fetch, except when he's selling his own stuff. But the Trades Unions be bent on showing them. A world of changes, as poor Enoch used to say. Not that he had much use for Trades Unions. He'd read about the Guilds of the old days and held they was powerfuller and better for some things. And they thought of the workmanship: Trades Unions only think of the worker. What I call workmanship, such as you see in this shop, I hope, be a thing of the past, save among old men like me. But the joy of making be gone."
"There's some things have got to be done right and not scamped, however."
"True; the work on the land must be done right, or the face of the earth will show it. There's only one right way to drive a furrow, or milk a cow. You can't scamp and 'ca'canny' when you'm milking a cow, Thomas. But the joy of the workmanship be gone out of work in the young men. Wages come between them and the work of their hands, and while the bricklayer jaws to the hodman, the bricks go in anyhow. Patience be the first thing. Human nature's human nature, and 'tis no use wanting better bread than's made of wheat."
"If everybody was patient," said Mr. Palk, "then the hosses, and even the donkeys, would come into their own no doubt. But patience be too often mistook for contentment; and when the masters think you'm content, they be only too pleased to leave it at that."
"Yet impatience is the first uprooter of happiness," argued Mr. Chaffe. "Take a little thing like habits. Only yesterday a particular nice, clean old woman was grumbling to me because her husband's simple custom was to spit in the fire when he was smoking; and sometimes he'd miss the fire. A nasty vexation for her no doubt; but not a thing as ought to cast a shadow over a home. Our habits are so much a part of ourselves, that it never strikes us we can worry our friends with 'em; but if you consider how the habits of even them you care about often fret you, then you'll see how often your little ways fret them."
"No doubt 'tis well to be patient with your neighbour's habits, so long as they'm honest," admitted Mr. Palk.
"Certainly; because if you don't, you'll set him thinking and find you'll get as good as you give. Patience all round be the watchword, Tom, and it would save a power of friction if it was practised. Nobody knows where his own skeleton pinches but himself, and to rate folk harshly may be doing a terrible cruel thing and touching a raw the sufferer can't help."
"Like Ben Bamsey," said the horseman. "'Tis whispered he've grown tootlish since his famous illness. That'll call for patience at Green Hayes."
"True love's always patient, my dear. Yes, the poor old man be sinking into the cloud, and the only bright thought is that he won't know it, or suffer himself. But them with brains will suffer to see him back in childhood. Yet he was always a childlike man and none the worse for it. The light's growing dim, and doctor says he'll fade gradual till he don't know one from another. And then, such is human nature, his family will change gradual too, and forget what he was, and come slow and sure to think of him as a thing like the kettle, or washing day—just a part of life and a duty and not much more."