"What do you know and what don't you know?" asked Head presently. "Be your old party going to do anything or nothing?"
"I don't know. But this I do know, that all your wild tales down here about his money be silly lies. We live hard enough, I can promise that, whatever you may think. If every man here spent his money so wise as Humphrey Baskerville, you wouldn't all be boozing in this bar now, but along with your lawful wives and families, helping the poor women to find a bit of pleasure in life. But I know you; you get a shipload of brats and leave their mothers to do all the horrid work of 'em, while you come in here every night like lords, and soak and twaddle and waste your money and put the world right, then go home not fit company for a dog——"
"Steady on—no preaching here—rule of the bar," said Mr. Voysey. "You think we're all blanks because you drew a blank, Susan. Yes, a blank you drew, though you might have had me in the early forties."
"You! I'd make a better man than you with a dozen pea-sticks," retorted Susan. "And I didn't draw a blank, I drawed Hacker, who'd be here now teaching you chaps to drink, if the Lord had spared him. You can't even drink now—so feeble have you growed. Hacker, with all his faults, was a fine man; and so's Humphrey Baskerville in his way."
"Talk on; but talk to the purpose, Susan. What have he done? That's the question. You ain't going to tell me he's done nought," suggested Mr. Head.
"I ain't going to tell you nothing at all, because I don't know nothing at all. He wouldn't ax me how to spend his money—nor you neither."
"Tell us who he's helping—if anybody," persisted the man. "How is it none haven't handed me back my money? You can mention—if you've got the pluck to do it—that I want my bit back so well as t'others; and mine be quite as much to me as Ned Baskerville's thousands was to him."
"Charity begins at home," repeated Susan, "and I'll lay you my hat, though the fog's took the feather out of curl, that if he does anything, 'twill be for his own first. He's that sort, I believe."
"They people at Cadworthy?"
"Yes. Not that I think he'll do aught; but if he does, 'twill be there. Mrs. Baskerville be taking very unkindly to the thought of leaving. She've lived here all her married life and brought all her childer there. But she've got to go. They're all off after Lady Day. Too much rent wanted by the new owner."