"There again—good luck surely. A crown I got by it; an' I ate my meat with Mason's mother an' sister who live there. Mason be Mr. Norcot's man, and his sister is called Tryphena. An' I be going over again, for she said, when I axed her, that pinky rims to the eyes didn't stand against a chap in her judgment. She thought 'twas a beauty, if anything. Her be a few year older'n me; but that often works very well, an' keeps down the family."
"You'd best to be careful, all the same," said Woodman. "The woman as you meets half-way, often makes you go t'other half afore you think you've started."
"I won't hear no word against that female from you or any man," declared Thomas Putt, growing very red.
"From me you certainly won't, seeing as I never heard tell of her afore this minute," replied Woodman calmly. "Only, as a married man, I say go slow. When a girl tells you such eyes as yourn be beautiful, she's getting to that state of mind when they put a home of their own afore truth and common sense an' everything."
Putt was about to answer rather warmly when Richard Beer appeared. His beard blew about him; his eyes were sunk into his head, and dull care stared from them.
"It's come!" he said. "I've held my peace these twenty-four hours; an' longer I will not. The ill luck have set in! There's no more doubt about it."
"Have it hit you?" asked Putt, his anger vanishing; "because if so, us ban't safe neither."
"Not directly. It strikes the farm. There's scores o' dozens o' moles in the meadow; and the rats have come to the pig-styes in an army."
"They be natural things," declared Putt. "You might expect 'em. Where there's pigs there's rats."
"Yes, but not like a plague. They've come up in a night, same as them frogs in Egypt."