"Hop off! Hop off an' croak somewhere else, you old raven!" replied Kek indignantly. "Let these men use their brains without your bleating. Ban't I old too? 'Tis vain growing old unless you grow artful with it. If they have got their intellects, they won't mind you."
"Nor you—you limb of the Devil," groaned Smallridge. "You—with his pitchfork in your forehead. I wish to God I'd never heard tell of you."
Kekewich turned from him to Harvey Woodman and the rest.
"'Tis up ten o'clock," he said, "an' you strong men in the prime of life have got to decide what you'll do about it, not this tootling old mumphead here. Use your sense an' say whether you'll look for a new master an' mistress an' seven shilling a week, or bide here with better money an' corn an' cider an' all the fatness of the earth. I'll speak no word; only I might remind you, Beer, an' you, Woodman, that you've got wives—that's all."
"Then 'tis for us to decide," said Woodman solemnly—"us four: me, Beer, Putt, and you, Mark Bickford. Here us stands. Now you have your tell first, Thomas Putt, 'cause you'm the youngest."
"I'm a poor tool for such a job, an' I shan't say nothing," answered Putt. "I'll abide by what you men do."
"So much for you then," said Woodman. "Us knows you haven't got more sense than, please God, you should have, yet 'tis a question whether you did ought to let another man keep your conscience. Now, Bickford, what's your view?"
Mr. Bickford, a man of colourless mind in the affairs of life, showed sudden and unexpected strength of purpose.
"I guess I'll bide an' pull the cross down," he said. "Master do clapper-claw a bit, but he pays me eight shilling a week; an' where I gets such money as that 'tis my duty to stop. You may squeak," he added to Uncle Smallridge, who uttered an inarticulate exclamation of misery at his decision, "but I be keeping company; an' I also be keeping my old bed-lying mother out o' the poorhouse. An' I'd pull down fifty crosses afore I'd lose eight shilling a week. If there's a mischief in it, ban't of my brewing."
"Well, then, 'tis for me an' you, Harvey," proceeded Richard Beer. "An' since I'm the older man, I'll come last an' wind up on it when you've spoke your mind."