"A funny old fool you are, Joe—just funny enough to make other fools laugh. And why should Humphrey Baskerville waste his money on a lot of silly people? Which of you would come forward and help him if he was hard up?"
"I would," said Jack Head. "With my opinions I'd help any thrifty person let in by this dead man—if I could. But I was let in myself. And you're in the truth to call us fools, for so we were."
"It's reason, every way, that your master might think of his brother's good name and right the wrong done by the man who was here afore me," declared Mr. Elford impartially.
"Why?" asked Mrs. Hacker. "Why do you say 'tis reason? If 'tis reason for him, 'tis just as much reason for every other man who can afford to mend it."
"That's what I say," argued Jack Head, but none agreed with him.
"Ban't our business, but 'tis Humphrey Baskerville's," declared the publican. "The dead man was his own brother and his only one. For the credit of the family he ought to come forward, and not leave the parson and other outsiders to do it."
"Because your brother does wrong, 'tis no business of yours to right the wrong," answered Mrs. Hacker. "Besides, 'tis well known that charity begins at home."
"And stops there," suggested Gollop. "No doubt at Hawk House, you and him be as snug as beetles in the tree bark, while other people don't know where to turn for a roof to cover 'em."
"They'd have poor speed if they was to turn to you, anyway," she said. "'Tis like your round-eyed, silly impudence to speak like that of a better man than ever you was or will be, or know how to be. He ban't bound to tell you where he spends his money, I believe; and if you was half as good a man—but there, what can you expect from a Gollop but a grunt? You'm a poor generation, you and your sister—God knows which is the worse."
"Bravo, Susan! Have another drop along o' me," cried Heathman Lintern, and she agreed to do so.